On this day in New York · July 30, 1916
German Saboteurs Blow Up Black Tom
A munitions depot in New York Harbor went up in the dead of night with a force felt for a hundred miles, and shrapnel struck the Statue of Liberty.
The facts
- Date
- July 30, 1916, about 2:08 a.m.
- Location
- The Black Tom pier, New York Harbor, off Jersey City
- Cause
- German sabotage of munitions bound for the Allies
- Damage
- At least seven dead and the Statue of Liberty struck by shrapnel
At about ten past two in the morning on July 30, 1916, a vast store of munitions waiting on the Black Tom pier in New York Harbor, on the Jersey City shore beside Liberty Island, exploded in a blast heard across the region. German agents had set the fires to keep the ammunition from reaching the Allies fighting World War I, a war the United States had not yet entered. The explosion shattered windows across Lower Manhattan and Jersey City, killed at least seven people, and sent fragments into the Statue of Liberty. It ranks among the largest man-made explosions before the atomic age.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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some lodged in the Statue of Liberty, and others in the clock tower of The Jersey Journal building
Black Tom explosion, Wikipedia
Source: Black Tom explosion, Wikipedia -
It is one of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions in history
Black Tom explosion, Wikipedia
Source: Black Tom explosion, Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The attack pushed a still-neutral country closer to war and exposed how open the harbor was to sabotage. The Statue of Liberty's torch has been closed to visitors ever since, in part because of the damage done that night.
Sources
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