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Speaker 1: The Day in History Class is production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to this Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that shines a light on the ups and downs

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Speaker 1: of everyday history on Gay Blusier and in this episode,

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Speaker 1: we're remembering a lesser known tragedy, one that served as

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Speaker 1: an inauspicious start to an otherwise bullish decade, the Roaring twenties.

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Speaker 1: The day was September sixteen, nineteen twenty. A horse drawn

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Speaker 1: carriage rigged with a makeshift bomb exploded on the busiest

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Speaker 1: corner of Wall Street. It was detonated at twelve oh

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Speaker 1: one p m. Just as hundreds of workers were leaving

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Speaker 1: their offices for lunch. The explosion killed thirty eight people

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Speaker 1: and severely injured hundreds of others. At the time, the

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Speaker 1: Wall Street bomb, as it came to be called, was

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Speaker 1: the deadliest terrorist attack ever committed on American soil. The

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Speaker 1: event would hold that odious distinction all the way until

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Speaker 1: when the Oklahoma City bombing claimed the lives of a

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty eight people. But unlike that case, the

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Speaker 1: culprit behind the Wall Street bombing was never positively identified,

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Speaker 1: and the crime remains unsolved to this day. The events

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Speaker 1: of that fateful afternoon were later pieced together from the

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Speaker 1: reports of surviving eyewitnesses. Shortly after the lunch rush began,

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Speaker 1: an unassuming man driving a red horse cart stopped on

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Speaker 1: the corner of Wall and Broad Street, right in front

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Speaker 1: of the U. S. S. A Office and just across

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Speaker 1: from the building of famed financier JP Morgan. The driver

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Speaker 1: quickly dismounted and slipped away into the crowd. A few

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Speaker 1: minutes later, the cart exploded and what one witness described

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Speaker 1: as quote two sheets of lame that seemed to envelope

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Speaker 1: the whole width of Wall Street and as high as

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Speaker 1: the tenth story of the tall buildings. Thirty of the

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Speaker 1: closest bystanders were killed instantly, eight more later died from

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Speaker 1: their injuries, and over three hundred people were injured, either

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Speaker 1: by the blast or by falling debris. The explosion was

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Speaker 1: so powerful that it overturned several Model T s and

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Speaker 1: derailed a street car a full block away. Shrapnel and

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Speaker 1: other bits of debris were launched high into the air,

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Speaker 1: and the streets were littered with broken glass, charred bodies,

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Speaker 1: and severed limbs, including those of the horse who unknowingly

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Speaker 1: delivered the bomb. Smoke and soot filled the air for

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Speaker 1: blocks in every direction, and the noise from the explosion

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Speaker 1: was reportedly heard all through Lower Manhattan and even across

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Speaker 1: the East River in Brooklyn. The nearby Stock Exchange suspended

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Speaker 1: trading for the day as thousands of New York City

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Speaker 1: policemen and Red Cross nurses began to search the wreckage

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Speaker 1: for survivors. At first, it was unclear if the explosion

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Speaker 1: had been intentional or just by accident. There was always

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Speaker 1: construction going on downtown, and dynamite was frequently brought in

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Speaker 1: by horse cart for use at the building sites. In

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Speaker 1: the beginning, investigators thought one of the workers might have

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Speaker 1: blown up a cart accidentally, but as they combed through

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Speaker 1: the debris, they soon found telltale signs of foul play.

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Speaker 1: The bomb casing used in the attack had been packed

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Speaker 1: with dynamite and topped with hundreds of pounds of iron weights,

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Speaker 1: the stackable kind used in window sashes. These weights were

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Speaker 1: intended to act as shrapnel, cutting down anyone who managed

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Speaker 1: to survive the blast itself. Investigators found enough identical metal

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Speaker 1: fragments at the scene to safely conclude that the explosion

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Speaker 1: had been no accident. However, the motive behind the attack

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Speaker 1: remained delusive. JP Morgan's Bank would have seemed like an

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Speaker 1: obvious target, except Morgan himself was on vacation in Scotland

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Speaker 1: at the time. His son Junius was wounded by the blast,

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Speaker 1: and his chief clerk, Thomas Joyce, was killed. But most

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Speaker 1: of the victims weren't wealthy business men at all. They

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Speaker 1: were street vendors, construction workers, stenographers and clerks, regular people

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Speaker 1: who were just on their way to lunch. If the

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Speaker 1: bomber had meant to send some kind of political message,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't clearly reflected by their victims. Adding to the

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Speaker 1: uncertainty was the fact that most of the damage was

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Speaker 1: cleared away overnight, including evidence that may have been key

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Speaker 1: to identifying the attacker. The forensic science of the day

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Speaker 1: still left a lot to be desired. The Bureau of Investigation,

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Speaker 1: the precursor to the FBI, interviewed hundreds of witnesses, but

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Speaker 1: their accounts suggested little about who had carried out the

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Speaker 1: attack or why. In the end, the most promising lead

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Speaker 1: on that front was a series of letters discovered shortly

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Speaker 1: for the explosion. A mail carrier had found four printed

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Speaker 1: flyers left in mail boxes about a block away from

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Speaker 1: Wall Street. They demanded the release of political prisoners and

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Speaker 1: were signed by a group that called itself the American

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Speaker 1: Anarchist Fighters. That revelation put a name to the potential perpetrators,

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Speaker 1: but the actual members of that group were still a mystery.

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Speaker 1: At the time, many Americans were fed up with the

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Speaker 1: wealth and equality that had been growing in the country

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Speaker 1: for decades and was perhaps best exemplified by Wall Street

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Speaker 1: billionaires like JP Morgan. That disillusionment had led to numerous

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Speaker 1: violent protests in the US, including dozens of other less

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Speaker 1: deadly bombings stretching back to the late eighteen hundreds. Most

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Speaker 1: of those attacks had been blamed on various anti capitalist, communist,

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Speaker 1: and anarchist groups as part of the nation's first read scare.

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Speaker 1: The Wall Street bombing seemed to be the latest in

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Speaker 1: that series, but neither the American and Artist Fighters nor

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Speaker 1: any other group ever claimed credit for the attack. Still,

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Speaker 1: the flyers discovered did provide a few clues, namely, their

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Speaker 1: tone and style, including numerous misspellings, had a lot in

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Speaker 1: common with one sent the previous year in connection to

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Speaker 1: bombings in several U s cities. Police had attributed that

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Speaker 1: terror campaign to a group called the Galleyanists, a gang

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Speaker 1: of Italian anarchists led by Luigi Galiani. He had been

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Speaker 1: deported in nineteen nineteen, but his followers may have carried

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Speaker 1: out the attack on Wall Street on his orders. The

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Speaker 1: iron weights used as shrapnel seemed to lend further credence

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Speaker 1: to that theory, as they matched the ones previously used

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Speaker 1: by the Galleyanists. The Bureau spent several years chasing that lead.

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Speaker 1: They searched cities all along the East Coast, trying to

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Speaker 1: track down who had printed the group's flyers or who

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Speaker 1: had sold them their iron weights, but all the agents

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Speaker 1: found were more dead ends. The investigation continued for the

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Speaker 1: next two decades, but in nineteen forty it was quietly dropped. Today,

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Speaker 1: the FBI believes the Bureau had it right all along,

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Speaker 1: and that a small band of Italian anarchists truly were

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Speaker 1: the ones responsible. The conclusion was drawn from the best

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Speaker 1: available evidence, but nonetheless it's still just a likely theory.

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Speaker 1: The morning after the Wall Street bombing, New York's Financial

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Speaker 1: district reopened for business. Broken windows were covered up with

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Speaker 1: canvas or boarded over, and many office workers returned to

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Speaker 1: their desks with bandages and slings. Their doggedness was meant

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Speaker 1: to send a message to their fellow citizens and to

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Speaker 1: the people who had planned and executed the attack. Business

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Speaker 1: in New York would continue as usual, bombs or no bombs.

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Speaker 1: In contrast to later terrorist attacks, No memorial or monument

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Speaker 1: was ever created for the Wall Street bombing of nineteen twenty,

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Speaker 1: but if you visit the site of JP Morgan's old

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Speaker 1: building at twenty three Wall Street, you can still see

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Speaker 1: the pock marks where shrapnels struck the facade. The damage

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Speaker 1: was never repaired, which in a way is a fitting

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Speaker 1: tribute in its own right. I'm Gay Lousier and hopefully

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Speaker 1: you now know a little more about history today than

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Speaker 1: you did yesterday. If you have a second and you're

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Speaker 1: so inclined, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and

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Speaker 1: Instagram at t d I HC Show, and if you

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Speaker 1: have any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them

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Speaker 1: my way at this day at I heart media dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks

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Speaker 1: to you for listening. I'll see you back here again

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Speaker 1: soon for another Day in History Class