The Black Tom Explosion (1916)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s August 1st. This day in 1916 (July 30th, in fact) a massive explosion rocked New York Harbor, shattering windows in Times Square and causing tremors as far away as Philadelphia.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the explosion on “Black Tom Island,” and what we came to learn about the German spy network that caused it. This explosion also led to the rise of the FBI and national intelligence efforts to more proactively anticipate crimes.

Find a transcript of this episode at: https://tinyurl.com/esoterichistory

This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories.

If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.com

Get in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Our website is thisdaypod.com Follow us on social @thisdaypod

Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Julie Shapiro, Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:10.0	This day, August 1st, 1916, actually July, 30th, 1916, explosions Rock New York Harbor,
0:18.4	killing four people and destroying some 20 million dollars worth of military goods.
0:24.0	This was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in U.S. history.
0:28.1	We will get into the destruction and devastation, including the damage to the Statue of Liberty which was right nearby
0:33.6	and of course we will talk about the reasons for this explosion but first before
0:37.4	we continue a shout out to listener Seth who recommended that we talk about this
0:40.8	incident what is known as the black tom explosion so
0:43.8	thank you Seth for putting us on our radar thank you to all of our listeners who
0:47.0	suggest stuff we love that but here to talk about the black tom
0:50.2	explosion are as always Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.
0:55.1	Hello there.
0:56.1	Hello Jody. Hey there.
0:57.3	So Nicky to paint the scene here on the night of this explosion Black Tom
1:02.4	Island is this small island that's part of a larger
1:04.8	complex of islands and peers and so forth in New York Harbor.
1:08.0	It's actually a little over closer to the New Jersey side.
1:10.8	It's near the Statue of Liberty. There's lots of shipping and
1:13.8	cargo and industry. There are freight cars, barges, freighters. A lot of them are
1:18.0	packed with explosives. The reports are up to 4 million pounds of explosives.
1:23.0	One barge that is moored against the pier has 100,000 pounds of dynamite and detonating fuses on it.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.