Blue
06-13-02, 02:52PM
I thought this was interesting after recent events of past year.
Terrorist's dynamite bomb on Wall Street 81 years ago killed dozens; the crime was never solved.
By BILL TORPY
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Columnist
The lunchtime crowds on Wall Street bustled in the warm September air as the bells at historic Trinity Church tolled noon.
Few pedestrians noticed a driverless, rickety wagon pulled by an old bay mare near the financial district's busiest corner. The horse paused outside the offices of J.P. Morgan & Co.
Suddenly, a puff of smoke, a flash and a "crash out of a blue sky," as one account put it. An automobile was hurled into the air, plate glass windows shattered for blocks, grotesquely wounded people writhed on the pavement. Others were reduced to "lifeless lumps of clay."
The ramshackle wagon held 100 pounds of dynamite packed with 500 pounds of fragmented steel window sashes. A remote control device detonated the load, driving thousands of jagged metal shards outward into the crowded sidewalks and streets. In an instant, 40 people were dead or dying. Nearly 300 others were injured.
Soon, word spread that another bomb was set to explode, causing "a mad panic in which men ruthlessly trampled women in an effort to escape," a reporter wrote.
It was Sept. 16, 1920. It was neither the first act of terror on American soil, nor the last.
But the Wall Street bombing was different from previous attacks. The indiscriminate malevolence was a departure from earlier attacks that were more narrowly targeted.
"There was no objective except general terrorism," The St. Louis Post-Dispatch observed. "The bomb was not directed against any particular person or property. It was directed against a public, anyone who happened to be near."
"It was the equivalent of a Timothy McVeigh attack, a horse-drawn carriage [driven] up to a target," said Larry Taulbee, an Emory University political science professor who advised a committee studying security for the Olympics. "They're looking for absolute shock value. By attacking civilians, you're trying to generate fear. Things haven't changed much."
The 1920 bombing stunned an already jittery American public that had come through a world war and a flu pandemic and was wracked by fears of labor riots, Bolshevik infiltrators and bomb-throwing anarchists.
NEWS (http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/1201/1920bomb/1216bombing.html)
http://www.nochicktrix.com/fun/oth/vb/blue/leadbomb.jpg
Terrorist's dynamite bomb on Wall Street 81 years ago killed dozens; the crime was never solved.
By BILL TORPY
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Columnist
The lunchtime crowds on Wall Street bustled in the warm September air as the bells at historic Trinity Church tolled noon.
Few pedestrians noticed a driverless, rickety wagon pulled by an old bay mare near the financial district's busiest corner. The horse paused outside the offices of J.P. Morgan & Co.
Suddenly, a puff of smoke, a flash and a "crash out of a blue sky," as one account put it. An automobile was hurled into the air, plate glass windows shattered for blocks, grotesquely wounded people writhed on the pavement. Others were reduced to "lifeless lumps of clay."
The ramshackle wagon held 100 pounds of dynamite packed with 500 pounds of fragmented steel window sashes. A remote control device detonated the load, driving thousands of jagged metal shards outward into the crowded sidewalks and streets. In an instant, 40 people were dead or dying. Nearly 300 others were injured.
Soon, word spread that another bomb was set to explode, causing "a mad panic in which men ruthlessly trampled women in an effort to escape," a reporter wrote.
It was Sept. 16, 1920. It was neither the first act of terror on American soil, nor the last.
But the Wall Street bombing was different from previous attacks. The indiscriminate malevolence was a departure from earlier attacks that were more narrowly targeted.
"There was no objective except general terrorism," The St. Louis Post-Dispatch observed. "The bomb was not directed against any particular person or property. It was directed against a public, anyone who happened to be near."
"It was the equivalent of a Timothy McVeigh attack, a horse-drawn carriage [driven] up to a target," said Larry Taulbee, an Emory University political science professor who advised a committee studying security for the Olympics. "They're looking for absolute shock value. By attacking civilians, you're trying to generate fear. Things haven't changed much."
The 1920 bombing stunned an already jittery American public that had come through a world war and a flu pandemic and was wracked by fears of labor riots, Bolshevik infiltrators and bomb-throwing anarchists.
NEWS (http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/1201/1920bomb/1216bombing.html)
http://www.nochicktrix.com/fun/oth/vb/blue/leadbomb.jpg