# Have you ever heard of the Black Tom Explosion, and if so, when was the first time you ever heard of it? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 7, 2021, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579 "2021-05-07T06:08:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2021, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/41 "2021-05-07T22:31:09Z")
No, that would be in the dim and distant past, when the History Channel actually broadcast history. You’re probably too young to remember. 😁 ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2021, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/42 "2021-05-07T22:33:03Z")
Back when LA only had five channels ? 😱 😲 😜 ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2021, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/43 "2021-05-07T22:36:56Z")
I’ve known about it at least since the '70s – possibly the '60s. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/44 "2021-05-08T02:10:36Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Actually, there was not any proof it was by German agents. That was suspected as a couple German agents had apparently done other sabotage. Munitions blew up all by themselves and there had been a series of small fires for smudge pots set- that was claimed to be not the cause, but America was looking for a excuse to declare war. In reality it has been known for a long time that the cause was German sabotage. Initially American authorities suspected negligence, but the truth emerged later. “Under a 1921 peace treaty between the United States and Germany, a commission was established to settle war claims. Lawyers for the plaintiffs finally proved that the plot had been hatched by German agents and organized from a rowhouse in Manhattan owned by a German-American opera singer.” > **[An Attack That Turned Out to Be German Terrorism Has a Modest Legacy 100...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/nyregion/an-attack-that-turned-out-to-be-german-terrorism-has-a-modest-legacy-100-years-later.html)** > > The authorities initially doubted that the explosion on an island in New York Harbor had been a plot by Germans. Now, a plaque in New Jersey is almost the only sign that it happened. The Germans ultimately paid millions in reparations for Black Tom. Far from looking for an excuse to enter the war, the Wilson administration was eager to avoid it, only reluctantly doing so a year later after it was revealed that Germany had tried to enlist Mexico as an ally against the U.S. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/45 "2021-05-08T03:21:29Z")
Ever heard of the Grandcamp? She exploded in Texas City when I was in fourth grade, killing 581 people. History is very selective about who it chooses to remember. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/46 "2021-05-08T10:17:33Z")
Today is first time for me. I’m more of a WWII guy. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/47 "2021-05-08T14:50:33Z")
OK, I get it now. This thread is like Unbreakable, except instead of causing mass casualty events find a super hero, something is creating threads to find the one person who is aware of the changes. That person is me. I’ve never heard of the Black Tom explosion, and I like reading about “large non-nuclear explosions”. You’d think a person like me would have heard of one that damaged the SoL. I hope the Texas City explosion still happened in the current reality, because that’s fascinating. I also remember Stouffer’s Stovetop stuffing. And Burgess Meredith saying “[It doesn’t DO anything. That’s the beauty of it!](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mind-boggling-movie-quote/304608)” The [Change Winds](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57327) blew my reality away. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/48 "2021-05-08T16:24:16Z")
So that cartoon references a newspaper talking about the momentousness of June through September 1881 and its future importance in history. Was the cartoon meant ironically? That what we think the future will care about may be what the future yawningly ho hums? Garfield’s assassination is something that I don’t recall learning about in school at all. Of more import than Lincoln’s death? More a trivia contest answer. I never heard of the Black Tom explosion before now. I think we learn the history that is either part of the narrative storyline or that contradicts the current established narrative. That explosion simply is not judged to be important to the arc of the storyline of The Great War and America’s involvement in it. Okay we also learn cool little odd vignettes and stories that serve to illustrate some greater point that our teachers want us to believe. This explosion didn’t hit those marks either I guess? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/49 "2021-05-08T16:56:19Z")
I’d say the cartoon is quite serious - it makes a couple of points, first, that people living through the 1880s had very little idea of what parts of that time period would seem important a hundred or more years later (and, by analogy, that we, the people living through now, have a similarly defective idea of what will seem important in 2200), and second, that history is full of events that seemed earth-shattering, and yet will be little remembered (in 1927, a madman killed three dozen elementary schoolchildren [Bath School disaster - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster) - but who remembers that?). ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/50 "2021-05-08T21:41:44Z")
I should add that the cartoon implies that if you suddenly hear of a startling event from the past, the odds are that its just something that you never heard of before because the past is full of so many things - not that someone has suddenly introduced this event into history and left you out of the update push. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/51 "2021-05-08T22:00:29Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Ever heard of the Grandcamp? She exploded in Texas City when I was in fourth grade, killing 581 people. History is very selective about who it chooses to remember. Yes. Unlike Black Tom, the Texas City explosion was at the top of the list of “really big explosions” and frequently referenced internationally. And given the timing (only a while since Pearl Harbor and only a while since Hiroshima) and location, it was also on the list of ‘things people feared were the start of nuclear war’. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/52 "2021-05-08T22:23:51Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > The St. Francis Dam Disaster. At least 431 dead. Who has heard of the Vajont Dam, in Italy? Estimated 1900-2500 dead… > [@jtur88](#): > > Ever heard of the Grandcamp? She exploded in Texas City when I was in fourth grade, killing 581 people. How about the _Mont-Blanc_? Killed around 2000 people, injured another 9000 or so, in the Halifax area. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/53 "2021-05-08T22:27:31Z")
I’ve heard of these explosions (the one that damaged the Statue of Liberty, the one in Texas City, Texas and the one in Halifax, Nova Scotia), but was not familiar with Black Tom, the Grandcamp or the Mont-Blanc. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/54 "2021-05-08T22:58:07Z")
Well, how many have not heard about Black Tom but know about the Port Chicago Disaster while remaining ignorant about Texas City while minimally aware of Halifax and the Mount Pelee horror? ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/55 "2021-05-08T22:59:59Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > Who has heard of the Vajont Dam, in Italy? Estimated 1900-2500 dead… > > How about the _Mont-Blanc_ ? Killed around 2000 people, injured another 9000 or so, in the Halifax area. Yes, and Yes (and Yes). They did scale model tests for the Vajont Dam, dropping rocks into a pond to see how big a wave it would make, but in the event the earth-slide into the dam was bigger than the scale-model rocks. After the event they decided that the whole valley was unstable, and that the engineers hadn’t been paying attention to the test wells, and that the geologists hadn’t understood the geology. The Mont-Blanc was a munitions ship in the fog, and a collision. Ships aren’t supposed to collide, even in the fog, so there was a lot of recrimination. Halifax is a well known ‘large explosion’, the Vajont Dam would probably only be known to people who are interested in Dams or Engineering (or have an interest in the area). (The Port Chicago disaster only because of it’s impact on WWII race relations.) ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/56 "2021-05-08T23:15:36Z")
This is the first I’ve heard of it. Six years as a History major and six seasons of _Drunk History_ have let me down. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/57 "2021-05-08T23:25:55Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > I think I _maybe_ heard of it, in that my brain didn’t think “What? No way!” but more “Ah, yeah… that?” No idea for sure or where I would have soaked it in (unless it was one of the seven previous times on this board) This was me, except that I saw it in some TV show within the last two years or so. I can’t remember if it was on some serious PBS program or one of Josh Gates’s shows. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/58 "2021-05-08T23:28:26Z")
This is the first I ever heard about it. My wife, who grew up in Brooklyn in 1940s had never heard of it either. I imagine the explosion was smaller than the Halifax explosion which every Canadian, including transplants like me, has heard of. ---
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2021, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/59 "2021-05-08T23:30:08Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Six years as a History major and six seasons of _Drunk History_ have let me down. Perhaps you should have done History major as a drunk and History Channel sober. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2021, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579/60 "2021-05-09T02:38:04Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > How about the _Mont-Blanc_ ? Killed around 2000 people, injured another 9000 or so, in the Halifax area. The Pen is indeed mightier than the sword. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-heard-of-the-black-tom-explosion-and-if-so-when-was-the-first-time-you-ever-heard-of-it/941579.md?page=4)