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The events of July 30 · Read the full edition → · More from July 30 →
19161776 Club

A pier of Allied munitions detonates in New York Harbor overnight

Shrapnel tears into the Statue of Liberty as windows shatter twenty-five miles away, in Times Square.

By the summer of 1916, the Lehigh Valley Railroad's Black Tom Terminal in Jersey City had become a critical artery for American munitions bound for the Allies, guarded by no gate and no lights. Just after 2 a.m. on July 30, roughly two million pounds of ammunition and 100,000 pounds of TNT ignited, an explosion strong enough to register as an earthquake. Jersey City police officer James Doherty, railroad police chief Joseph Leyden, a barge captain, and a ten-week-old infant named Arthur Tosson were among at least seven killed. The Statue of Liberty took a hundred thousand dollars in shrapnel damage, and her torch has not reopened to visitors since…

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More from July 30
1945

A submarine finds Indianapolis in the dark, unescorted; the cruiser is gone in twelve minutes

Six torpedoes in the night sea north of Palau leave hundreds of sailors adrift for days before anyone knows they are missing.
1956

Eisenhower signs the words already stamped on coins into the law itself

The phrase had ridden American currency since 1954; Congress just gave it a statute to stand on.
1971

Scott lands Falcon by hand at Hadley Rille; astronauts get a car on the Moon

The computer drifted off course, so David Scott flew the last stretch himself, straight toward a mountain valley chosen for its scenery.
19741776 Club
A unanimous ruling leaves no room left to hide the Oval Office recordings.
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More from Gilded Age & Progressive Era
1890

Harrison signs Idaho into the union; the 43rd state misses the Fourth by one day

Delegate Dubois had asked the President to wait and sign on July 4th; Harrison declined, ending twenty-seven years of territorial status a day early.
1898

McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution; Hawaii is annexed, and its $4 million debt with it

The House voted 209 to 91 and the Senate 42 to 21, with a Pacific war making the islands' coaling station and anchorage look essential to Washington.
1890

Harrison signs Wyoming into the Union; women's suffrage comes with it

The 44th state enters with its suffrage provision intact, approved by voters 6,272 to 1,903 last November, a condition Congress had to accept whole or not at all.
1914

USS Nevada slides into the Fore River; the Navy calls her armor scheme unlike anything built before

Eleanor Anne Seibert christens the oil-fueled battleship at Quincy, whose "all or nothing" plating packs 41 percent of the ship's weight over only the spaces that matter.
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