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The Black Tom explosion of July 30, 1916 in Jersey City, New Jersey was an act of sabotage on American ammunition supplies by German agents to prevent the materials from being used by the Allies in World War I. is the 211th day of the year (212th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Friday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ...
Location of Jersey City within Hudson County Coordinates: , Country State County Hudson Government - Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy - Business Administrator Brian P. OReilly Area - City 21. ...
Map of the World showing the participants in World War I. Those fighting on the Allies side (at one point or another) are depicted in green, the Central Powers in orange, and neutral countries in gray. ...
“The Great War †redirects here. ...
Black Tom Island prior to the blast
 Black Tom Island, lying off a Jersey City pier. The term Black Tom originally referred to an island in New York Harbor next to Liberty Island. The island received its name from a local legend of a "dark-skinned" resident named Tom. By 1880, a causeway and railway had been built connecting it to the mainland for use as a shipping depot. Sometime between 1905 and 1916, the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, which owned the island and causeway, expanded the island with landfill, resulting in the addition of the entire area to the limits of Jersey City. The area contained a mile-long pier that housed the depot as well as warehouses for the National Dock and Storage Company. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (700x963, 177 KB)Map of Jersey City, NJ circa 1905 showing location of Black Tom. ...
Image File history File links Download high resolution version (700x963, 177 KB)Map of Jersey City, NJ circa 1905 showing location of Black Tom. ...
New York Harbor, a geographic term, refers collectively to the rivers, bays, and tidal estuaries near the mouth of the Hudson River in the vicinity of New York City. ...
Liberty Island Liberty Island, formerly called Bedloes Island, is a small uninhabited island in Upper New York Bay in the United States, best known as the location of the Statue of Liberty. ...
1884 map of the Pennsylvania, Reading and Lehigh Valley Railroads The Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill and Susquehanna Railroad Company (AAR reporting mark LV) was incorporated April 21, 1846 in Pennsylvania. ...
Black Tom was a major munitions depot for materials manufactured in the northeast. Prior to a 1915 blockade of the Central Powers by the British Royal Navy, American industries were free to sell their materials to any buyer, but by this time the Allies were the only possible customers. It was reported that on the night of the attack, two million pounds of ammunition were being stored at the depot in freight cars, including one-hundred thousand pounds of TNT on the Johnson Barge No.17, all awaiting eventual shipment to Britain and France. It was obviously a tempting target. Future mayor Frank Hague, then commissioner of public safety, reported that he had been told that the barge had been "tied up at Black Tom to avoid a twenty-five dollar towing charge." *, which would have been around $470 today. The First Battle of the Atlantic (1914–1918) was a naval campaign of World War I, largely fought in the seas around the British Isles and in the Atlantic Ocean. ...
Red: Central Powers at their zenith. ...
This article is about the navy of the United Kingdom. ...
Frank Hague Frank Hague (January 17, 1876 – January 1, 1956) was the mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey from 1917 to 1947. ...
Explosion After midnight, a series of small fires were found on the pier. Some guards fled, fearing an explosion; others attempted to fight the fires. Eventually they called the Jersey City Fire Department.  View of the Statue of Liberty from the site of the explosion. At 2:08 a.m., the first and biggest of the explosions took place. Shrapnel from the explosion travelled long distances, some lodging in the Statue of Liberty and some in the clocktower of the Jersey Journal building in Journal Square, over a mile away, stopping the clock at 2:12 a.m. The explosion was the equivalent of an earthquake measuring between 5.0 and 5.5 on the Richter Scale * and was felt as far away as Philadelphia. Windows broke as far as 25 miles (40 km) away, including thousands in lower Manhattan. Some window panes in Times Square were completely shattered. The outer wall of Jersey City's City Hall was cracked and the Brooklyn Bridge was shaken. For other monuments to freedom, see Monument of Liberty. ...
The Jersey Journal is a newspaper published from Jersey City, New Jersey The paper has its offices at 30 Journal Square, Jersey City, NJ 07306 Current Managers Scott Ring Publisher Judith A. Locorriere Editor Denise Copeland Operations Director Paul Lanaris Advertising Director Tom Pritchard Advertising Sales Manager Mandy Otero Circulation...
Journal Square is an area of Jersey City, New Jersey near the offices of the Jersey Journal newspaper. ...
The Richter magnitude test scale (or more correctly local magnitude ML scale) assigns a single number to quantify the size of an earthquake. ...
For other uses, see Philadelphia (disambiguation) and Philly. ...
This article is about the borough of New York City. ...
For other uses, see Times Square (disambiguation). ...
 Black Tom pier shortly after the explosion. Property damage from the attack was estimated at $20 million ($377 million today). The damage to the Statue of Liberty was valued at $100,000 ($1.9 million today) and included the skirt and the torch. The arm has been closed to visitors ever since.[1] Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...
Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...
Immigrants being processed at Ellis Island also had to be evacuated to lower Manhattan. Reports vary, but as many as seven people may have been killed, including: For the island in Australia, see Ellis Island, Queensland. ...
- a Jersey City policeman [2],
- a Lehigh Valley Railroad Police Chief [3],
- a ten week old infant [4],
- and the barge captain [5].
Injuries numbered in the hundreds. Smaller explosions continued to occur for hours after the initial blast.
Aftermath Two of the guards who had lit the smudge pots were immediately arrested. However, it soon became clear that the blast had not been an accident. It was traced to a Slovak immigrant named Michael Kristoff (probably a stolen identity), who had served in the U.S. Army, but admitted to carrying suitcases for the Germans before America entered World War I. According to him, two of the guards were German agents. It is likely that the bombing involved some of the ingenious techniques developed by a group of German agents surrounding German ambassador Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, probably using the pencil bombs developed by Captain Franz von Rintelen. Although blamed at the time solely on German agents, later investigations in the aftermath of the Annie Larsen incidence unearthed links between the Ghadar conspiracy and the Black Tom explosion. Franz von Papen is known to have also been involved in both. Later investigations by the Directorate of Naval Intelligence is known to have found extensive links to the Irish movement, the Indian Movement, as well as the Communist elements[citation needed].[1][2] “The Great War †redirects here. ...
Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff (November 14, 1862 – October 6, 1939) was the German ambassador to America from 1908 to 1917. ...
Franz von Rintelen (died 1949) was a German spy working in the United States during World War I. He came from a banking family with good connections in American banking. ...
The Annie Larsen affair was a gun-running plot in the United States during World War I.[1] The plot, involving Indias Ghadar Party, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the German Foreign office, was a part of the larger Hindu German Conspiracy,[2] and its uncovering was the prime...
The Ghadar conspiracy of 1915 was a conspiracy formulated by the Ghadar Party to forment and trigger a Pan-Indian mutiny in the British Indian Army, from Punjab to Singapore, in February 1915 to overthrow The Raj in the Indian subcontinent. ...
Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen (29 October 1879 – 2 May 1969) was a German nobleman Catholic politician, General Staff officer, and diplomat, who served as Chancellor of Germany in 1932. ...
The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company sought damages against Germany under the Treaty of Berlin with the German-American Mixed Claims Commission. The commission in 1939 declared that Imperial Germany had been responsible and ordered damages. The two sides finally settled on $50 million in 1953. The final payment was made in 1979. The term Treaty of Berlin is often used for the separate post-World War I peace accord of August 25, 1921 between the United States and Germany following the U.S. Senates rejection of parts of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and Warren G. Hardings defeat of League...
Black Tom today
 Melted bottle from Black Tom Explosion The location of Black Tom Island can be visited today as part of Liberty State Park. The park consists of former industrial and railroad lands created by filling in the waters adjoining Black Tom to the north, making it now part of the mainland. The former Black Tom Island is the area at the end of Morris Pesin Drive in the southeastern corner of the park. A plaque marks the spot of the explosion. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (700x963, 177 KB)Map of Jersey City, NJ circa 1905 showing location of Black Tom. ...
Image File history File links Download high resolution version (700x963, 177 KB)Map of Jersey City, NJ circa 1905 showing location of Black Tom. ...
Liberty State Park is a state park in Jersey City, New Jersey. ...
 Detail from the commemorative plaque The plaque reads Explosion at Liberty!
On July 30, 1916 the Black Tom munitions depot exploded rocking New York Harbor and sending residents tumbling from their beds.
The noise of the explosion was heard as far away as Maryland and Connecticut. On Ellis Island, terrified immigrants were evacuated by ferry to the Battery. Shrapnel pierced the Statue of Liberty (the arm of the Statue was closed to visitors after this). Property damage was estimated at $20 million. It is not known how many died.
Why the explosion? Was it an accident or planned? According to historians, the Germans sabotaged the Lehigh Valley munitions depot in order to stop deliveries being made to the British who had blockaded the Germans in Europe.
You are walking on a site which saw one of the worst acts of terrorism in American history. A stained glass window at Our Lady of Czestochowa Catholic church memorialized the victims of the attack.
See also
References - ^ Stafford, D.. Men of Secrets. Roosevelt and Churchill.. New York Times. Retrieved on 2007-10-24.
- ^ Myonihan, D.P. Report of the Commission on on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy. Senate Document 105-2. Fas.org. Retrieved on 2007-10-24.
- Chad Millman, The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and an Epic Hunt for Justice
- Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany's Secret War in America, 1914-1917, 1989
Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ...
is the 297th day of the year (298th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ...
is the 297th day of the year (298th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
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