January 10, 2025 • 44 mins
How does a tiny rock off the shore of New York lead to the formation of the Japanese Internment Camps in World War 2? Tune in and find out as we talk about one of the lesser known, yet very interesting, moments in American history, The Black Tom Island Incident.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Black Tom Island incident, Nate.
What do you know about theBlack Tom Island incident?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Not much.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
I know Black Tom, but that's comic books, oh yeah, it
is a comic book guy, isn't ittoo?
Huh, yeah, wasn't Black?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Tom, the guy from Deadpool 2, where he's like.
You know, he called him racistor no, he wasn't calling him
racist.
He's like Black Tom.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
He was a white guy and um cable shot in the face
and he called it's like you killblack tom, you racist huh, uh,
I think wasn't black tom part ofthe hellfire club in the x-men
world.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Um, I mean that would make sense because then then
they'd have the rights for blacktom yeah, well, I'm guessing
this black tom is probably adifferent black tom than the
other oh, I'm sure they'reprobably unrelated.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
They, they might be, although now I'm curious.
All right, so the Black Tomincident Are you ready to learn
about it, nate?
I am Okie dokie.
Our story starts sometime inthe late 1800s like mid-late
1800s, 1850s, 1860s in thewaterways between New York and
New Jersey.
These waterways contain somevery important and very busy
(01:02):
shipping lanes and, veryinconveniently, in the middle of
all this was a large rock thatNeptune decided to put there
just to be a jerk.
This rock was such a hazard tosailors and, more importantly,
their cargo, because it was alarge, sneaky rock, kind of one
of those rocks that would hidein the fog and then just jump
out.
And I wanted to sink your shiprandomly.
It was quite well known forsinking ships, claiming lives,
stealing cargo, stealing cargo,stealing cargo yes, yeah.
(01:26):
I get it Thief in the night.
So one proven way that societyhas dealt with these sneaky
rocks and waterways was byturning this tiny, small,
hard-to-see rock into a gianteasy-to-see and hard-to-miss
island.
So they decided that, hey, newYork, it's undergoing some
massive growth at the time.
We've got plenty ofconstruction refuse to deal with
, you know old, like scrappavement and scrap steel beams
(01:50):
and this and that, and we've gotto get rid of that.
We've got an island we couldbuild.
Let's just dump all our trasharound this rock and build a
man-made island.
Get rid of garbage, save somecargo, save some lives.
More importantly, the cargo I'mguessing it's yeah, sailor,
sailor.
Lives back then were probablypretty cheap compared to cargo
oh yeah, they're like well, wehave this.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Uh, quick, what do we say?
The cargo, the sailors?
Uh, I think we know the, weknow the answer, the question, I
think we got we got tons ofsailors back home.
We only have so many uh tons ofcoffee and if not sailors we
have drunk people.
We use, you know, uh, rightwith a hijack what we could
Shanghai them Shanghai.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
We could Shanghai all the sailors we want.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Because you can't Shanghai cargo, I mean.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I guess you could, but that's something else.
Yeah, that'd be a piratingthing.
I guess you Shanghai people andyou pirate cargo.
So this island would go frombeing a tiny little rock in the
middle of the waterways to aroughly 25-acre-sized island
that's just made out of trashand garbage and stuff.
It was big enough that variousfactories and other industries
started popping up all over theisland, including at one point.
(02:50):
It had a powder factory thatwould blow up in 1875 and kill
four people.
Good times, this island mayhave been cursed right off the
bat.
The island will actually beeventually known as Black Tom
Island due to quote-unquote thelarge number of dark-skinned
fishermen that inhabited thearea.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So I want you to make of that what you will here.
I was thinking it wasn't goingto be racist.
No, what a fool I was.
Still, you pass me from 30seconds ago.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
You're like maybe there's like some black elm
trees on the island or something.
That's why they called it BlackTomahawk.
Nope, racism.
Good old-fashioned late 1800sracism.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Well, to be fair though for good old-fashioned
1800s racism, this is prettymild, Actually, you're 100%
correct, they could have calledit much worse things.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Oh, yeah, Much, much worse oh yeah, let your
imagination go wild but think ofthe worst thing.
it's probably that yep, blacktime island was the nicest term
they could use in schools fromthen on right.
1905 rolls around and thisisland is now big enough and
there's enough industryhappening on it that the lehigh
(04:01):
valley railroad decided make tomake it worth their while to
take a bunch more garbage andconnect that little island to
the mainland so they can put ashipping island or train
stations out there and make it abig shipping hub for themselves
.
This way, you know, it's a nicetransfer yard.
It's conveniently located, kindof in the middle of the water,
oddly enough.
Yeah, that's weird, yeah, yeah,it's kind of weird because it's
(04:26):
only like maybe half a mile offthe shore, or my, maybe a mile
off the shore.
It's kind of weird how it's setup, because it's just like
right in the middle of thiswaterway between jersey and, uh,
new york, will you say?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
oh, I mean in in terms of like actual distance.
Yeah, only half a mile or amile is fine, but if you think
about it like that's a ways away, like yeah it is, yeah, it kind
of is.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
You know, it sort of is out in the middle of nowhere.
And because of that reason theydecided that, hey, this would
be a good place for companies tostore all their munitions and
stuff, you know, explosives andarmaments and this and that
Uh-oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, uh-oh is correct.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
And right now, at this point, it wasn't
necessarily, like you know,military stuff.
It wasn't like war.
It's more, like you knowblasting caps and dynamite and
other stuff.
You know that they're makingthe whole Wild West with.
It's not like weapons of war.
Yeah, it's not weapons of war,it's innocent stuff like
dynamite and muskets, I guessOnly highly combustible things
that can kill just as much.
But that's the way it wassupposed to stay, was just, you
know, just blasting caps andstuff, no real like weapons of
war out there.
But then 1914 and World War Ibreaks out and immediately Black
(05:33):
Tom Island becomes a storagecenter for munitions that are
heading from America over toEurope.
So at the start of World War I,the United States took a
neutrality stance in the war,which you might think would be
like, hey, that's good, that waywe're not, you know, supporting
the wrong side or this or thatand you know we're staying out
of it, right?
Nope, right, because we'reneutral.
That just meant that even ourgovernment was kind of staying
(05:53):
out of it.
American companies could sellto whatever side they wanted.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
No-transcript over there which is, you know, kind
of like doesn't have muchforesight, because you're like,
look, I know you're selling, soselling both sides, and go ahead
and get what you're gettinggood.
But I mean, you see a world war, like it's a it's all of europe
is getting up and like theirallies to america.
(06:31):
It's like, dude, you, you know,like there's no way we're not
gonna get involved.
Yeah, it's well, but let me,let me.
Let me take a step back, though.
Were we still during that time?
Were we still likequote-unquote isolationist in
terms of, like world affairs,because we didn't really start
sticking our dick in everythinguntil, like you know, now we do,
(06:52):
like we got shit everywhere?
But were we at that time, werewe still kind of minding our own
business?
I believe?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
World War, I was kind of the thing that pulled us out
of isolationism.
So yeah, at this beginningpoint we were still more or less
an isolationist nation.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Okay.
Okay, then I retract what I wastalking about a minute ago.
That would make I mean it'sstill bad, but I mean that would
make sense.
Then there would be no realexpectations.
We would be then pulled into it.
Like you know, we're sellingthe weapons that are shooting
our people.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, and over here we're still dealing with all
those uppity natives who didn'tseem to like being displaced.
So we had our own issues.
We were busy doing our owninnocent little kind things over
here.
So, right, pretty quickly wewere selling enough arms to
Europe that by the summer of1960, approximately 2 million
pounds of small arms andartillery ammunition were being
(07:39):
stored at the depot in freightcars and barges.
This also included 100,000pounds of TNT sitting on Johnson
Barge number 17.
A lot of this stuff was actuallydestined for Russia, the
biggest purchaser of arms duringthe war from us.
Russia liked them Americanweapons.
Like I said at the start, wewere selling freely to both
sides.
It's like, hey, whoever's youknow can get us the money, we'll
(07:59):
get you the weapons.
But as the war went along andthe British Navy started
blockading ports all over Europe, it became harder and harder to
sell to some nations, germanybeing one of them.
So Germany was there being like, hey, america's supposed to be
neutral, but they seem to onlybe selling weapons to, you know,
france and Britain and Russia,our enemies.
So when they would ask America,america would just kind of
(08:19):
shrug and be like, hey, you knowthose blockades, what you gonna
do?
Huh Well, germany didn't reallylike that answer and they were
just like you know, you couldget us those arms if you wanted
to.
We think you're kind of playingfavorites, even though you're
acting like you know, you'rebeing neutral.
We don't like how this is.
So they basically took usselling weapons to the Russians
as an act of war on their part,and they thus decided that
(08:41):
America was the enemy.
Now it seems like they didn'treally like out and out announce
that, hey, we're going afterAmerica.
So they decided more of they'regoing to go with the terrorism
route and see if they coulddissuade America from selling
arms by just blowing up stuffaround North America, if they
could.
So terrorist attacks fromGermany now begin.
First up was up in Canada.
(09:01):
They actually bombed watersupplies in Toronto to try to
get Canada out of the war.
That apparently didn't work.
Up here in Washington State, inElliott Bay, they actually blew
up a ship to be like hey, wegot our eyes on you, which I
don't.
Apparently that didn't workeither, because we just kept
selling weapons to them.
And oddly enough, I never evenknew that we had Germans blow up
(09:21):
a ship in Elliott Bay up hereand I've lived it through my
entire life.
Yeah, no idea, two German spyattacks into North America back
then, and it's not like we're.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
You know, especially around that time it's not like
we're all like, oh, let's nottalk about the Germans and what
the bad things they did, Right,so you'd think they'd be a
little more like, hey,terrorized us.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, yeah, they kind of were.
It's just sort of beenforgotten to time.
We'll talk about that a littlebit more in the upcoming moments
.
So those two small attacksblowing up the water plant, the
water supply in Toronto and theship in Elliott Bay, those
weren't exactly big.
Their third attack, though,that would be very big, and that
would be known as the Black TomIsland incident, ba-na-na-na-na
(10:02):
.
This happened on July 30th 1916.
So shortly around midnight,shortly after midnight, a man
who worked on Black Tom Island,a man named Michael Christoph.
He accepted $500 from Germanspies to get them around
security and act as lookoutwhile they committed acts of
espionage on the island, or actsof sabotage, I should say.
Just so you know, $500 wasworth about $15,000 in today's
(10:25):
money.
So will that $500 be worth itfor this man?
We'll find out shortly.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Well, seeing how you know his name, it doesn't sound
like things went well for him,just the fact that he has a
known name and we know how muchthey paid him.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
This is very true.
If I called him the unknownmillionaire, then we'd we'd be
like, oh, that guy got away withit or we don't know how they
got in there.
That's, that's how he, that'shis happy ending, that is happy.
He's just like off at a beachin cuba or something, fanning
himself and sipping pina coladas.
So, anyways, a small explosionand a small fire at the train
(11:02):
depot, which soon, uh, break out, set by those saboteurs, and,
as we said, there was a lot ofexplosives on this island.
So if there was actually a firecrew, you know, stationed on the
island, you know a little likeemergency fire crew, ambulance
kind of crew thing, well, thesmall explosion at the start
woke up that emergency crew andthey leapt into action.
Well, actually, half of thecrew leapt into action,
(11:23):
apparently, the fire crew showedup and half of them were like
we're going to stop this beforeit gets worse and the other half
was like, oh, we're out, bye.
So, yeah, peace out, we're done.
Yeah, half of them were like,yeah, this is past the point of
containment, we're getting outof here.
Were the people who stayedbehind.
Succeed no 208.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, we're like like .
You got the people who are like, if I could put out the garden
hose, I'm staying, and then I'mnot going to be here.
And then you've got the peoplewho are like run into danger,
let's save things.
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
So those people are far braver, braver than me,
because yeah, I would have been,I would have looked at him like
I'm going to take this time toget what's known as a head start
.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, I'd like to think like if there were people
in danger, I might do somethinglike that.
But if there was this likeproperty of like, yeah, you have
to write me up, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
At least I'll be alive to get the write up,
because otherwise Insurance canhandle this somewhere in the
future, I would imagine.
Yeah, so at 2.08 am the secondand the biggest of the
explosions would go off.
It's estimated this explosionwas between 5.0 and 5.5 on the
Richter scale and sent shrapneland debris flying for miles.
Just so you know, 5.5 on theRichter scale would make it 30
times more powerful than theWorld Trade Center's going down.
(12:37):
That's how big of a force isgoing on here.
The explosion created adetonation wave that traveled at
24,000 feet per second, withenough force to lift
firefighters up and out of theirboots and into the air,
throwing them, you know, I guess, walls through the air,
injuring many of them, killingsome Thousands of women.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
It's always a sign of a big explosion or like
something big and impactful.
When people get flung out oftheir shoes, yeah right, they're
like oh, their shoes are upbehind.
It must have been real bad.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, just some smoldering shoes just sitting
there in the same place thatthey were Scorched body you know
, 25 feet away Great.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
I love like look at that scorched body, like fuck
that scorched body.
Look, his shoes are right here.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Those are still in pretty good condition.
Shoes are expensive back inthese days, so let's take them.
Thousands of windows brokenearly instantly in Manhattan,
with windows also being brokenas far as 25 miles away due to
the shock waves.
The blast was even feltstrongly in Philadelphia, about
90 miles away, and people evenreported being woken up by it in
Maryland, thinking it was anearthquake and that was about
(13:43):
200 miles away.
So yeah, up to 200 miles away,people.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Because I mean, I'm assuming Maryland doesn't get
many earthquakes, or any really.
So I guess they wouldn't know,you know they wouldn't
understand like, oh, this is aquick explosion, or like oh,
this is actual.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Well, also at this time too, there was lots of
immigrants.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
So I mean they probably came from lands with
the.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, because this is like when Ellis Island was at
their hoppinest, kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
So probably a lot of people showing up from
earthquake, earthquake-riddenlands Like California, I guess I
don't know what places areriddled with earthquakes America
, alright, well.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
They came to America, sir, Like shut up.
How about that?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
They just went all the way around the globe and
immigrated to the East Coast thelong way.
The famed St Patrick's Parishin New Jersey had some of its
famous stained glass destroyedin the blast, which is pretty
sad because this was one of themost famous churches in America
at the time, with some oldancient stained glass and big
history, and that whole thingwas just completely destroyed.
The church has actually sinceappeared in the Sopranos Neat.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Always bothers me.
I always hate it when, like Imean art basically, but stained
glass specifically because it'ssuch like, always bothers me.
I always hate it when, like Imean art basically, but, like
you know, stained glassspecifically because it's such
like it wasn't.
You know leonardo da vincialmost a dicaprio leonardo da
vinci?
You know he painted.
I mean it took a lot of talentand like all the stuff that he
painted.
And you know, I'm sure it tooka while.
But stained glass is like, notonly do you know the image
(15:11):
you're going for, but then youalso need to like, first of all
make the glass into the coloryou need, in the shape you need,
and then put it a puzzle, likeit.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
So I don't know when I hear stained glass gets the
story that always bums me outreason stained glass is so
expensive because it does take alot of work and effort to make
a lot of foresight and yeah,it's the foresight is all.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
It's kind of like one of my achilles heel.
It's like all getting from acanvas like, okay, what am I
gonna do, what am I going?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
to do, going together the way it should.
Randomly, yeah, new jersey cityhall sustained significant
damage from this flying debris.
Uh hit and damaged the statueof liberty, including severe
damage to the arm and torch area.
So apparently the shockwavefrom the blast was big enough it
literally moved the entire armover to where it contacted the
head a little bit.
That's how much the actualwhole statue flexed.
(16:03):
This actually caused enoughstructural damage to the statue
that they have since closed offthe torch area.
That's actually what kind ofled to this whole research thing
.
Because there's a lot ofconspiracy theories, because
they don't let you go into thetorch of the statue of liberty
oh, what could be that I didn't,I didn't realize that.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I guess I didn't really take I mean, the reverse
a little bit.
I do remember you mentioningsomething about it on a prior
podcast, or maybe we weretalking about like, about that
uh, about how you can't go up inthe torch, but I guess I didn
didn't realize like it was this.
You know, I haven't heard ofthis, so it's not a surprise.
I didn't realize because Ididn't know what this was.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
But apparently most people don't know about this.
And if you look up, like whyyou can't go up into the Statue
of Liberty arm, there's oh, allsorts of crazy stuff like alien
technology up there, the torch,and it's like this just huge
area where you can wander around.
But no, actually if you seepictures of it, it's like you
know a tiny, thin littlestairwell that goes like a
(16:59):
supply closet size thing andthat's what's up in the torch.
Yeah, I've never been, I'venever seen it, but I've heard
the Statue of Liberty isn't asbig as yeah yeah you, you look
at and you're like, oh my god,that thing's massive, you could
run around in it, but I guessit's big enough that a line of
people can go up there.
Single file and that's about it.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Especially when you're not there, you see
pictures that are a little bitdeceptive.
One thing that springs to mindand like Jenna and I always
point it out when you look atthe pictures of Seattle and the
Space Needle, if you're lookingparticularly like, one of the
famous ones is Frasier.
You know the TV show yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
It looks like the Space Needle is like dominating
the skyline and one of the mostbuildings.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And most pictures you see of Seattle.
It looks like not only is theSpace Needle the biggest thing
around, but it's also like mixedin amongst all the tall
buildings and you're like, no,no, it's way the fuck over there
.
Yeah, the bigger builds are waythe hell over there.
And in the end, yeah, it's big,but it's not that big.
Yeah, it's really not.
(17:59):
If it was with all thebuildings that were taller, you
wouldn't be able to see it,because the buildings would be
taller than it is.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah, compared to the buildings around it, it's
pretty small.
For the most part, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
So it's like it looks real impressive on Frasier, but
in reality like it is.
No, it's not nothing, you know,you go there.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Well, when it was built back in like 1963 or
whatever.
It was actually one of thetaller buildings in Seattle.
It's just skyscrapers have likegotten so much bigger since
then.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, so it's not.
What was once impressive is nolonger impressive.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, because in Seattle there's I think it's
called the Smith Tower orsomething.
At one point it was the tallestbuilding west of the
Mississippi in a novel ofAmerica or in the world or
whatever.
And yeah, if you look at it now, it's still there and it is
like, mmm, it's in the smallerthird of all the buildings
around, like I mean, it isliterally dwarfed by everything
around it.
And it's also kind of likeweird how they made it the
(18:50):
tallest building in the world,because you can tell they sort
of like fudged it a little bit,because it looks like a normal
building and then at the verytop there's like this little
spire that they built that goesup like another four or five
stories.
I hate.
You look at, yeah, you look atyou're just like, oh, the.
The only reason this is thetallest is because they built
that little addition.
Somebody's like, oh, you'reabout 30 feet away from being
tossed building.
They're like, oh well, let'sadd another 40 feet to it.
Look, at least that's what Ialways came across to me.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
If a woman comes in and she stands at four foot tall
, but she has a beehive on herhead, so an additional two feet.
She is not now six feet tall,she is still four foot tall.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
One thing I think that throws off people's
perspective of the Statue ofLiberty 2 is also Ghostbusters 2
, where they're riding around.
I was just thinking about that.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I was literally just thinking about when you were
talking about, like, how youcouldn't get up in the thing.
The first thing that popped inmy head was Ghostbusters 2.
Yep.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Go there and there's spring slime all over the thing,
Like we're going to make thisstatue walk.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
In fact I was going to ask you when we were talking
about the size Like is thataccurate, the size of the Statue
of Liberty with Ghostbusters 2?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
But I get around asking.
Actually, if you click underthe go under our text channels
on discord and click under thegeneral tab, I sent you a
picture of like the uh ladderthat takes you up to the torch
and how tiny it is and also whatit's like inside the skull or
the side, the crown.
So is it big enough?
Yeah, it's probably big enough,I don't know.
I mean it's literally bigenough for like three
ghostbusters to stand in thereand that's about it.
Yeah, it's big enough for likeone single file line kind of
make it through therecomfortably.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
So that was plausible .
But yeah, like again the thingthat people really think about,
because even I thought the torchin my head that thing is
massive.
You know, in my head the Statueof Liberty can like pole dance
in the Sears Tower.
You know like that's how big itis in my head.
But you know, as we've talkedabout, it's not.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yep, yeah, I'm like looking at a picture of the
torch and it's not a whole lotbigger than a human, to be
honest, like you can see peoplelike standing next to it working
on it.
It's like, eh, it's not thatbig, but yeah, if you go online,
grandpa snuck me back up therein the 80s blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, apparently they're alllying, they're all dirty, dirty
(20:57):
liars, dirty liars.
Yeah, I know, I was verydisillusioned when I just
realized that people would go onthe internet and lie for no
real reason.
Liars on the internetEverywhere.
Also, in our little Discordchat you can also see the
aftermath of the explosion, thevery last picture I sent there.
Yeah, everything's kind of justturned into a fine dust on that
island.
Yeah, man.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
There is not much on that island, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
You can see some like train wheels and stuff that
were like too solid to get blownup.
But yeah, it's um, that wholeisland just kind of went poof.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Which also strangely took care of the garbage problem
, which also strangely took careof their garbage problem.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yes, actually it did so.
It was approximately $100,000worth of damage was done to the
Statue of Liberty, and that'spretty significant.
How much About $300,000 inthen-days money.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, which is about $300,000 in then-days money.
I only picked up dollars.
I'm like, okay, wait, talkabout what.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
You're like, wait a minute, dollars is modern day
money.
Back then they used shekels.
What's going on, sean?
Immigrants in nearby EllisIsland had to be evacuated
temporarily into ManhattanBecause not only flying debris
and damages and stuff, and alsopeople were wondering If these
were like attacks that weregoing to go on.
Hey, did we just get bombed, orwhatever?
(22:13):
Well, I guess there reallywasn't a ton of bombs back then
because, you know, planes werekind of new, but artillery,
shells and stuff existed and whoknows, maybe we're getting
artillery from the shore orsomething.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, people were in a bit of a panic during all this
going on because also you knowjust, an island's exploding next
to you I mean, especially sinceyou know they're talking about
like yeah, even though we mightnot be involved, people do know
there's a war going on andsuddenly there's a huge
explosion.
That'd be like I don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
I'd be like ah yeah, and then the old drunk uncles in
the corner would be like I toldyou it would happen.
You all said I was a liar, but Itold you it's damn French.
Nearby Fort Wood, at the mainentrance, a four-inch thick iron
door was actually knocked offof its hinges from that blast
too.
Like the whole door got likeknocked off its hinges and like
(22:58):
pushed forwards into the uh fort.
So that was pretty impressivetoo.
Following that giant explosion,uh, several smaller explosions
rocked the area for severalhours, even days too, you know,
like unexploded munitions thatwould just randomly go off, or a
stick of dynamite that justeventually got hot enough to
blow up.
So it was pretty dangerousaround that area for a good long
while.
Afterwards too, just wanderingaround taking inventory of stuff
(23:20):
, and all of a sudden, you know,explosion happens underneath
you.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
You wonder even like today, all of a sudden, I know
we're like ah, yeah, just stuffthat has a.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
we call this a hundred-year dynamite.
If it gets disturbed, it won'tblow up for a hundred years, A
hundred years later, 2016.
Boom.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, hell yeah.
No, you know, I've been tryingto find, like someone posting a
side-by-side image of the Statueof Liberty from Ghostbusters to
the reality.
Nobody, there's not a singleimage that has like them
side-by-side.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Probably everybody was just like that's a stupid
thing to do.
Who would ever think that theywould want that?
But yeah, the only thing.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
The only thing I saw was talking about um cloverfield
.
Remember cloverfield, even ifyou haven't seen the movie.
The trailer I do know of it,yeah yeah, the statue of
liberty's head got tossed and islike oh my god.
And I do remember in that moviethey had to make it way bigger
because otherwise when they didthe actual size it was very
impressive yeah, it was like thesize of a small bus kind of
thing.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, right, that's, that's not much.
But yeah, if you have somethingthat's like the size of a
building, just like rolling down, uh, main street that's it
wasn't quite that big, but itwas.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
It was actually like big and intimidating and they're
like, yeah, no it would be.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
yeah, Hundreds of injuries were reported.
Only seven fatalities werereported, by the papers actually
, which doesn't seem that big.
But also, as people will pointout, there was a lot of hobos
and black tom fishermen aroundthe island that nobody really
cared if they got blown up.
So, yeah, the actual fatalitieswas probably significantly
higher than seven.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Once again talk about that time period.
It's like reported.
The big quotations are reported.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, it was like seven white Christian men were
killed and others Amongst others.
Yeah, amongst others Amongstthose people.
But, yeah, like the sevenfatalities were the barge
captain, new Jersey PoliceDepartment officer, james F
Doherty, lehigh Valley Railroadchief of police, joseph Layden,
and also a the sad fatality ofthis all, a 10-week-old infant
(25:20):
named Arthur Tossin was thrownfrom his crib a mile away from
the blast and the force wasenough to kill him, or so the
parents say.
I mean, like seconds beforethat happened, they might have
just like spiked the baby like afootball.
Yeah, he just like spike thebaby like a football.
Yeah, he's like, oh, I hatethis fucking baby.
Yeah, wait, he's a hugeexplosion, here's my opportunity
is this my baby?
(25:41):
the neighbors, yeah, yeah I meanit is a possibility.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, they go the paper's like I hear your baby
died.
I'm like, yes, blood hair, blueeyes, well, front page.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yep, exactly.
So, yeah, in the end, just that, in one night, six piers, 13
warehouses and dozens of railedcars just simply vanished, and
their place was a 300 by 150foot crater filled with
contaminated water and debris.
Because you know, when you'vegot a bunch of explosives
exploding, that does leave sometoxic waste behind.
(26:15):
Yeah, all the blasting residueand nitroglycerin and this and
that, not good times.
The overall property damagefrom all this was assessed at
$20 million, or $560 million intoday's money.
News of the blast reachesPresident Woodrow Wilson and he
remarks of the incident as quoteunquote a regrettable incident
(26:36):
at a private railway terminalwhich is a really clever way of
being like yep, real clever wayof being like this isn't a
government thing, All thoseexplosives, that's a private
sector.
They can deal with that Wow.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
That was so naked, just like oh this sucks, this
happened on private land,exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Sucking for that railroad company.
Thankfully, we are the Americangovernment.
This has nothing to do with us,as they just walk away.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I mean, couldn't even just leave it for like later,
or implied Like oh, this is aterrible tragedy, you know, mr
Wilson.
Mr Wilson, what do you thinkabout who's responsible for this
?
Oh well, you see, it happenedon private land.
So about who's responsible forthis?
Speaker 1 (27:17):
oh well, you see it happened on private land.
So we had yeah, it had to bepart of the main statement.
Yep, however, he did uh,because uh it was during wars
were going on across the seas,they decided to uh send out
edgar e clark of the interstatecommerce commission to uh
investigate and see whatactually happened at this
explosion.
And and investigation wentabound and one thing they
learned is, you know, that giantbarge that was just covered in
(27:38):
TNT like 100,000 pounds of TNTon it.
Yeah, that exploded.
Well, apparently, that bargewas supposed to have left
several days before, but thething was is the waters were
very uncertain and unsafe aroundthere.
So in order to leave, theywould have had to have paid a
$25 towing charge to have like auh tow boats tow them out to
(27:59):
the open sea.
So it was safer, but theydidn't want to spend that $25.
So they're just like, eh, we'lljust sit at the port for a
while and wait it out, likewhat's the worst that could
happen?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Well, I mean, look at him.
Well, I mean, the captain ofthat barge did die, so I guess
paid for it with his own life.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, very true, cheap ass.
Of course, you never know likeback.
You know back in these days, Imean here my, you know, if
people just disappeared, they'relike you'll leave for milk and
never come back.
They're like oh man, I hate myjob, I hate my wife, I hate my
kids.
Oh, a giant explosion.
I guess I'm gonna move acrosscountry now and that's it.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
No one ever held back .
Then you didn't have to moveacross country, you could move
like two towns over five milesaway.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Very true, yeah, very true like 25 years later, like
what they stop, like they'retraveling through the country
and they stop by a store likefrank.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, it was not hard to disappear back then.
Those days Ah, those were thedays, Right, I know.
It's probably the freedom ofbeing able just to abandon
everything you have and justnever come back.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
I have no intention of like doing that, but, man,
you can imagine just like allthis debt just crushing us.
You know what?
Let's just go, you know thisdebt just crushing us.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
You know what?
Let's just go.
You know like this is gonna golive on a beach somewhere in the
middle or, you know, in centralamerica and just see what
happens no, like again, not evencentral america.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Hey, let's move like one state over and, yeah right,
start fresh.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Like uh, I went from townsend to I don't know, my
name is uh thomas google yep,just nail a note on your door as
you leave Died from the plague,and then nobody will question
it and just be like, well, he'sdead, I guess we'll just rent
out his apartment now.
So when it actually came towhat caused the blast, the
investigators first thought itwas going to be smudge pots were
(29:47):
behind the whole thing, becauseapparently smudge pots is an
old school, just like a giantoil burning furnace that you
could use for Like heat or toget rid of like mosquitoes or
other various bugs.
And shortly before the firehappened, a bunch of smudge Pots
got lit up because they werehaving bad mosquito Problems
that night.
So at first Everybody was like,oh well, that's what it is,
good job, everybody, we're alldone, yay.
(30:07):
And they almost like sealed upthe investigation On that, just
like right off the bat.
Just like, well, smudge pots,people weren't careful, that's
what blew up a whole smudge potthing.
But then they're just like, hey,those germans started attacking
us in other parts of thecountry.
Let's investigate a little bitfurther.
Maybe we should uh, you knowfigure out if this has to do
with that war over yonder.
So the government decided hey,let's go assign the fledgling
(30:31):
bureau of investigation to thiscase.
They can figure it out.
There are, you know, you know,top dogs.
The only problem is they werereally small at the time only
260 agents at the time butbecause of this and other things
, this group would eventuallybecome the Federal Bureau of
Investigation or the FBI.
So investigating this is kindof what started the FBI for
America.
Yay, yay, right, yeah, yay,exactly Yay.
(30:56):
America, yay, yay, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Exactly.
Yay, the only thing I think ofis like if the FBI didn't do all
the heinous shit the FBI did,then another, you know it'd be
like we'd be talking about, Idon't know, the.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
International Bureau of Investigation yeah,
International.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Bureau of Dickheads or something.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, exactly, they would have done the exact same
thing.
Yeah, fbi, you're not soimportant.
If you didn't do all thisheinous stuff, somebody else
would have.
I think you're so cool.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Right, you think you're so original.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Since the precursor to the FBI was so understaffed,
president Woodrow Wilson alsosent in the Secret Service to
help them out.
And also they teamed up withthe New York Bomb Squad and they
all joined to form an action,uh, or an investigating super
group that all the kids thoughtwas cool.
Comic books and massmerchandising spree was to
follow the investigation crewyou know what's so stupid.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
You know it's so stupid for a heartbeat, just a
heartbeat, and it's so stupid.
I thought you're gonna say newyork jets, like fucking
scooby-doo, like come on, scoobyand the new york jets.
Let's go figure out why thishappened.
Why is this huge explosion?
Speaker 1 (32:04):
oh, look, it's joe namath to help us out.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Joe namath hi, kids wanna watch me throw a football
kelly jean joe namath.
What's all this?
What's all this?
Powder burns.
We found a small infant.
Is it white?
No, then who cares?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
that's pretty accurate for the time.
So after a year ofinvestigating in 1917 they
finally get their big break andthey find out about that Michael
Kristoff guy and the $500 theGerman spies gave him.
So they swoop in and they pickhim up and they start
interrogating him.
And in the middle of all thisinterrogation, just like in a
Law and Order episode, somebodybusts in and goes like hey man,
you guys messed up all thispaperwork.
(32:44):
You gotta let him go until youget all this paperwork sorted
out.
So they let him go run into thecourts, get their paperwork all
squared away, go back to arrestthe dude and surprise, surprise
, he's gone.
Nowhere to be found, you think.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
You just got a shit ton of money and like, as we
were just talking about onetalent over, yeah, exactly Like
let's go, Fuck this, let's go.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Yep, yeah, you know.
As soon as they let him go,that man just hopped on a bus
and he just did not look back.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Oh yeah, the moment he walked out the door, Yakety
Sax kicks in.
He, like sped, walked to hishouse, started packing shit up,
ran out the door.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
That money probably didn't last him too long because
eventually it did turn out thatthey caught up with him in like
various other prisons he wasgetting in and out of over the
years from other stuff that hedid.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, apparently he wasn't a great guy Cause, yeah,
he fled from the police and heimmediately went back into
prison for other stuff.
I guess you've got a bunch ofmoney like that.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
And especially for back then, lay low.
Yeah, yeah, you go, you find anice little place and you
settled down, unless he wasusing it for, like I don't know,
the the love of the game.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
He's like, I know I've got all this money here,
here, but it did only translateto fifteen thousand dollars
after uh oh okay, yeah, you know, yeah, I mean it's 500 bucks
back then, which is 15 000.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Uh, when, for some reason, I guess in my head you
did say that my in my head, as Iwas talking just now, I was.
I translate 15 000 back then,not thinking about what's got
you, you're thinking he'srunning around like a couple
hundred grand okay, fair enough.
Yeah, you know, he ran away.
Great, I could totally see why?
Speaker 1 (34:12):
yeah, he probably ran away and drank all that money
away in like a sitting orsomething like that.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, it was like one night he decided to go and just
you know, go whoring and he'slike wakes up the next day.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
He's like, well there that went During that whoring
time.
He probably caught somethingbad, because he died of
tuberculosis in 1928 while inprison.
That's got to be a bummer of ofa way to go in prison with
tuberculosis, because you're notgetting great medical treatment
there back in 1928.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
If any, your treatment was stay in this room.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
They probably just pull you aside and just have
some twisted-looking Germandoctor do quote-unquote
procedures on you.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Herman.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Goering, he's going to find out what's wrong with
you, sir.
Is he going to fix me?
No, no, no, no, no, he's justgoing to find out what's wrong
with you.
As far as the actual Germansaboteurs who did the explosion
and the whole setup thing, oneof them was actually caught in
the Mexican border in 1980,trying to escape America, or,
you know, just trying to escapewhile the heat died down.
1980?
(35:09):
, 1918.
Oh, okay, that's like 1980.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
He's like 1980s, like Jesus Christ.
How did they even know he was?
That would be amazing.
We had this old assmotherfucker across the bridge.
He's German.
He clearly had something to dowith the bombing.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
You're at the Mexican border in 1980, and there's
like this 95-year-old dude justlike mean-mugging, this other
like 95-year-old dude I think Iknow you from somewhere.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Black Tom Island.
You blew it up.
World War I and II and Vietnamand the Korean War and all those
shits passed by.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Even better too is the German spy.
Sneakily he's got like theold-school German pointy hat
from World War I.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
With that like spike on top.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yep, exactly Were you from World War I Nein.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Good times, yeah, it's good times.
So well, I mean, I guess, Imean I don't even know how they
would like link it, unless hehad stuff, that because yeah, it
was 1918 I guess, but like itwas the mexican border, it's not
, they didn't say how theycaught him, because it's not
like they got had a fax machineback, then they just faxed the
picture down to him or something.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
I mean so yeah, not exactly sure how they caught him
, because it's not like they hada fax machine back, then they
just faxed a picture down to himor something.
So yeah, not exactly sure howthey caught him.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Unless he was like oh sorry, I need to declare I
bombed Black Tom Island, jesus.
I was asking if he had anyapples or anything, but okay.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Hey, hey German dude, why are you wearing this shirt
that says blew up?
Black tom island, and all I gotwas this lousy t-shirt with a
with a like a picture of himwith two thumbs who blew up
black tom island.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
This guy, the further shirt, him like for their
shirts.
Two thumbs, the bombs, likeabout to explode.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
The back of the shirt's the explosion ah, ask me
about what I was doing on blacktom island.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Two years ago.
I like how you used two yearsago because it going forward for
the rest of it.
You wore this shirt 20 yearslater.
Guess what I was doing?
A black tom island two yearsago.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Originally I was gonna update the shirt every
year.
But it turned out to be veryexpensive, right?
Custom printing presses weren'ta thing back then.
I only did it like three times,then I realized it was too much
.
Right Now I just take a sharpieand I just draw a one in front
of whatever number is there he'sgot his shirt covered in
sharpie.
So the other German spy that weknow of, that night he actually
(37:28):
managed to escape capture andkind of went around doing spy
stuff all throughout World WarII until the the russians
captured him and killed him.
So that probably wasn't funeither.
I can't picture being capturedas a spy by russians turning out
to be a good thing yeah, Idon't, I don't think, um, the
russians are.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
They are not exactly known for, uh, hospitality, yeah
, hospitality and light touch.
Yeah, oh, this guy is, uh, yeah, he's, he's got information we
want.
So let's just kind of we'lltalk sternly to him.
You know, I'll count to three,very, very angrily.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah, it was like world war one back in those days
.
They just stuck you in a roomwith a horny rat sputin and let
him have his way with you, right?
Yeah, this giant horse dick.
Yeah, just like said in thesong.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Oh it was like nothing, Go ahead.
I didn't know where I was goingwith it.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Well, I was going to say I love this.
There's this one meme whereit's like that song Rasputin by
Boney M yeah, Rasputin'sgrandchildren were alive when
that song came out.
So there's, a nine-year-oldbusiness and all of a sudden a
song about how good yourgranddad fucks comes on the
radio.
It was song about how good yourgranddad fucks comes on the
radio.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
It was like grandpa, I mean.
But let's be real, of all thethings people said about your
grandfather, that was probablylike on the, the happy end yeah,
honestly that what.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
That is kind of like one of the nicer things they
could have said about him on,things could have gone a lot
worse, I guess I assume there'sstill relatives around right.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I mean, or did they do that with the hitler family?
Did or like we're to end ourbloodline?
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, I don't really know.
Hmm, Speaking of Russians,though, one side effect from all
this happening was, uh, Russiawas not happy about that
explosion because, uh, that wasall there, more, mostly their
arms and shipments.
They were on that Islandwaiting coming over to them.
So, uh, they were not exactlyhappy with the Lehigh Valley
Railroad Company, and theydecide to sue the pants off them
(39:14):
for gross negligence, as youknow you tend to do.
But in a fun moment oflawyering, the lawsuit take
place right after that Bolshevikrevolution.
So the government of Russiachanged hands and the railroad
company was like hey, man, thatcontract we signed was for the
previous government, not withthis one.
That just came because ofrevolution, so we should be off
the hook.
I mean, it sounds very lawyerly,and of course it sounds very
(39:36):
lawyerly, be like yeah, well, Imean, we didn't sign it with
this king.
Yeah, that would be kind oflike be like hey, we signed this
with the blast president, notwith the current one.
But the courts did not agreewith that.
Ok, yeah, of course, do notagree.
In fact, it almost kind ofbackfired on the uh uh, railroad
(39:57):
company, because I guess theformer remnants of the old
government were still kind ofhanging around in some uh way or
another.
So, uh, with the method thatthe railroad company tried,
there was a chance they openedthemselves to get sued by both
governments, the previous oneand the older one, or the
previous one the current one,yeah.
So they kind of had to like dosome last minute, uh,
apologizing, of course you'd.
No, no, we didn't mean that weweren't trying this, please
don't sue us twice.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
I was drunk, it's Russia.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
As a fellow Russian, you know what it's like being
drunk around the clock.
I'm drunk right now.
It is the Russian way of things.
So the cost of all thatexploded munitions and property
damage was valued at $50 million, and that's basically what I
think the Russians got rewardedwith.
Somewhere around $50 milliontoo, and all this basically got
lumped into that giant $33billion of post-World War I
(40:46):
reparations that Germany wasstuck with.
Remember that, nate?
Remember how well that workedout?
Oh, yeah, it worked outbeautifully.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I think bad happened.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Oh well, germany handled it in the best way
possible.
See, what they actually did isyou know those Capital One cards
you get where it's liketransfer all your balances to
this card and get a low interestrate.
Well, they did that.
They just got a Capital Onecard and they transferred all
$33 billion to that and thenthey made like two payments and
then they just stopped paying it.
They changed their address acouple of times, moved PO boxes
(41:19):
and they just waited for thewhole thing to get forgotten
about.
So that's how it worked out.
Sounds like a way to go.
Yeah, it's the American way ofavoiding debt.
The Germans were pioneers inthat.
Yes, I am joking about how theydid that.
Somewhere there's poor peoplelistening to the podcast.
Be like yes, I know that method.
Right, consolidate all yourdebt to one company and then
screw over that company.
One more big fallout from thiswhole thing One of the
investigators from all this,from the island blowing up, was
(41:41):
Harvard Law School graduate,john McCloy, who had gone on to
help create the policy ofJapanese internment camps in
World War II, using this BlackTom Island as an example of why
we need them saying that, hey,if we don't lock up all these
Japanese, we could haveourselves another Black Tom
Island incident with terrorisms,and even FDR used Black Tom
Island to justify the internmentcamps going on.
Actual saying is we don't wantanother Black Tom Island.
(42:04):
So there you go.
This was used for racism yearson afterwards and that's pretty
much the end of the story.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Yeah, I always hate the internment camp stuff
because, yeah you, just at thesame time there were germans
walking around, you know, but ofcourse you know, oh, that's
color difference there.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Racism, yay, yay.
Well, you gotta do that oldfamily guy thing where you whip
out that uh color gradient thingand it blows oh yeah it's like
not okay, yeah right, that'spretty much how it works.
The same with the catalogingall the dead people on Black Tom
Island.
They probably just went aroundwith one of those gradient cards
like those little paintswatches, and just hold it up
next to the skin color and belike, eh, it doesn't count, eh,
(42:43):
yeah, so did you learn?
Anything fun and exciting fromthis Nate.
I did actually.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
I mean, we talked about how the Statue of Liberty
was damaged and, you know,obviously like one of the
excuses for internment camps,and just you know it was, I
don't know, it was veryenjoyable.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
How easy it was to just disappear back in the day.
Yeah, it counts for all thedads who went out to go get grab
a gallon of milk or somecigarettes and never came back.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Right, you come to find out later on.
They have like two morefamilies.
Yeah, exactly, you weren't eventhe first family, right, you're
the second?
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yeah, why did daddy leave us?
Oh, he went back to hisoriginal family.
You mean his second family?
No, his original family.
We were the second family,unfortunately.
So do, do, do, do, do, boink.
I should probably stop therecording before I forget Doink,
doink, doink, because sometimesI wonder what happens.
The Black Tom Island incident, Nate.
What do you know about theBlack Tom Island incident?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Not much.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
I know Black Tom, but that's comic books, oh yeah, it
is a comic book guy, isn't ittoo?
Huh, yeah, wasn't Black?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Tom, the guy from Deadpool 2, where he's like.
You know, he called him racistor no, he wasn't calling him
racist.
He's like Black Tom.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
He was a white guy and um cable shot in the face
and he called it's like you killblack tom, you racist huh, uh,
I think wasn't black tom part ofthe hellfire club in the x-men
world.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Um, I mean that would make sense because then then
they'd have the rights for blacktom yeah, well, I'm guessing
this black tom is probably adifferent black tom than the
other oh, I'm sure they'reprobably unrelated.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
They, they might be, although now I'm curious.
All right, so the Black Tomincident Are you ready to learn
about it, nate?
I am Okie dokie.
Our story starts sometime inthe late 1800s like mid-late
1800s, 1850s, 1860s in thewaterways between New York and
New Jersey.
These waterways contain somevery important and very busy
(01:02):
shipping lanes and, veryinconveniently, in the middle of
all this was a large rock thatNeptune decided to put there
just to be a jerk.
This rock was such a hazard tosailors and, more importantly,
their cargo, because it was alarge, sneaky rock, kind of one
of those rocks that would hidein the fog and then just jump
out.
And I wanted to sink your shiprandomly.
It was quite well known forsinking ships, claiming lives,
stealing cargo, stealing cargo,stealing cargo yes, yeah.
(01:26):
I get it Thief in the night.
So one proven way that societyhas dealt with these sneaky
rocks and waterways was byturning this tiny, small,
hard-to-see rock into a gianteasy-to-see and hard-to-miss
island.
So they decided that, hey, newYork, it's undergoing some
massive growth at the time.
We've got plenty ofconstruction refuse to deal with
, you know old, like scrappavement and scrap steel beams
(01:50):
and this and that, and we've gotto get rid of that.
We've got an island we couldbuild.
Let's just dump all our trasharound this rock and build a
man-made island.
Get rid of garbage, save somecargo, save some lives.
More importantly, the cargo I'mguessing it's yeah, sailor,
sailor.
Lives back then were probablypretty cheap compared to cargo
oh yeah, they're like well, wehave this.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Uh, quick, what do we say?
The cargo, the sailors?
Uh, I think we know the, weknow the answer, the question, I
think we got we got tons ofsailors back home.
We only have so many uh tons ofcoffee and if not sailors we
have drunk people.
We use, you know, uh, rightwith a hijack what we could
Shanghai them Shanghai.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
We could Shanghai all the sailors we want.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Because you can't Shanghai cargo, I mean.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I guess you could, but that's something else.
Yeah, that'd be a piratingthing.
I guess you Shanghai people andyou pirate cargo.
So this island would go frombeing a tiny little rock in the
middle of the waterways to aroughly 25-acre-sized island
that's just made out of trashand garbage and stuff.
It was big enough that variousfactories and other industries
started popping up all over theisland, including at one point.
(02:50):
It had a powder factory thatwould blow up in 1875 and kill
four people.
Good times, this island mayhave been cursed right off the
bat.
The island will actually beeventually known as Black Tom
Island due to quote-unquote thelarge number of dark-skinned
fishermen that inhabited thearea.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So I want you to make of that what you will here.
I was thinking it wasn't goingto be racist.
No, what a fool I was.
Still, you pass me from 30seconds ago.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
You're like maybe there's like some black elm
trees on the island or something.
That's why they called it BlackTomahawk.
Nope, racism.
Good old-fashioned late 1800sracism.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Well, to be fair though for good old-fashioned
1800s racism, this is prettymild, Actually, you're 100%
correct, they could have calledit much worse things.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Oh, yeah, Much, much worse oh yeah, let your
imagination go wild but think ofthe worst thing.
it's probably that yep, blacktime island was the nicest term
they could use in schools fromthen on right.
1905 rolls around and thisisland is now big enough and
there's enough industryhappening on it that the lehigh
(04:01):
valley railroad decided make tomake it worth their while to
take a bunch more garbage andconnect that little island to
the mainland so they can put ashipping island or train
stations out there and make it abig shipping hub for themselves
.
This way, you know, it's a nicetransfer yard.
It's conveniently located, kindof in the middle of the water,
oddly enough.
Yeah, that's weird, yeah, yeah,it's kind of weird because it's
(04:26):
only like maybe half a mile offthe shore, or my, maybe a mile
off the shore.
It's kind of weird how it's setup, because it's just like
right in the middle of thiswaterway between jersey and, uh,
new york, will you say?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
oh, I mean in in terms of like actual distance.
Yeah, only half a mile or amile is fine, but if you think
about it like that's a ways away, like yeah it is, yeah, it kind
of is.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
You know, it sort of is out in the middle of nowhere.
And because of that reason theydecided that, hey, this would
be a good place for companies tostore all their munitions and
stuff, you know, explosives andarmaments and this and that
Uh-oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, uh-oh is correct.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
And right now, at this point, it wasn't
necessarily, like you know,military stuff.
It wasn't like war.
It's more, like you knowblasting caps and dynamite and
other stuff.
You know that they're makingthe whole Wild West with.
It's not like weapons of war.
Yeah, it's not weapons of war,it's innocent stuff like
dynamite and muskets, I guessOnly highly combustible things
that can kill just as much.
But that's the way it wassupposed to stay, was just, you
know, just blasting caps andstuff, no real like weapons of
war out there.
But then 1914 and World War Ibreaks out and immediately Black
(05:33):
Tom Island becomes a storagecenter for munitions that are
heading from America over toEurope.
So at the start of World War I,the United States took a
neutrality stance in the war,which you might think would be
like, hey, that's good, that waywe're not, you know, supporting
the wrong side or this or thatand you know we're staying out
of it, right?
Nope, right, because we'reneutral.
That just meant that even ourgovernment was kind of staying
(05:53):
out of it.
American companies could sellto whatever side they wanted.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
No-transcript over there which is, you know, kind
of like doesn't have muchforesight, because you're like,
look, I know you're selling, soselling both sides, and go ahead
and get what you're gettinggood.
But I mean, you see a world war, like it's a it's all of europe
is getting up and like theirallies to america.
(06:31):
It's like, dude, you, you know,like there's no way we're not
gonna get involved.
Yeah, it's well, but let me,let me.
Let me take a step back, though.
Were we still during that time?
Were we still likequote-unquote isolationist in
terms of, like world affairs,because we didn't really start
sticking our dick in everythinguntil, like you know, now we do,
(06:52):
like we got shit everywhere?
But were we at that time, werewe still kind of minding our own
business?
I believe?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
World War, I was kind of the thing that pulled us out
of isolationism.
So yeah, at this beginningpoint we were still more or less
an isolationist nation.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Okay.
Okay, then I retract what I wastalking about a minute ago.
That would make I mean it'sstill bad, but I mean that would
make sense.
Then there would be no realexpectations.
We would be then pulled into it.
Like you know, we're sellingthe weapons that are shooting
our people.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, and over here we're still dealing with all
those uppity natives who didn'tseem to like being displaced.
So we had our own issues.
We were busy doing our owninnocent little kind things over
here.
So, right, pretty quickly wewere selling enough arms to
Europe that by the summer of1960, approximately 2 million
pounds of small arms andartillery ammunition were being
(07:39):
stored at the depot in freightcars and barges.
This also included 100,000pounds of TNT sitting on Johnson
Barge number 17.
A lot of this stuff was actuallydestined for Russia, the
biggest purchaser of arms duringthe war from us.
Russia liked them Americanweapons.
Like I said at the start, wewere selling freely to both
sides.
It's like, hey, whoever's youknow can get us the money, we'll
(07:59):
get you the weapons.
But as the war went along andthe British Navy started
blockading ports all over Europe, it became harder and harder to
sell to some nations, germanybeing one of them.
So Germany was there being like, hey, america's supposed to be
neutral, but they seem to onlybe selling weapons to, you know,
france and Britain and Russia,our enemies.
So when they would ask America,america would just kind of
(08:19):
shrug and be like, hey, you knowthose blockades, what you gonna
do?
Huh Well, germany didn't reallylike that answer and they were
just like you know, you couldget us those arms if you wanted
to.
We think you're kind of playingfavorites, even though you're
acting like you know, you'rebeing neutral.
We don't like how this is.
So they basically took usselling weapons to the Russians
as an act of war on their part,and they thus decided that
(08:41):
America was the enemy.
Now it seems like they didn'treally like out and out announce
that, hey, we're going afterAmerica.
So they decided more of they'regoing to go with the terrorism
route and see if they coulddissuade America from selling
arms by just blowing up stuffaround North America, if they
could.
So terrorist attacks fromGermany now begin.
First up was up in Canada.
(09:01):
They actually bombed watersupplies in Toronto to try to
get Canada out of the war.
That apparently didn't work.
Up here in Washington State, inElliott Bay, they actually blew
up a ship to be like hey, wegot our eyes on you, which I
don't.
Apparently that didn't workeither, because we just kept
selling weapons to them.
And oddly enough, I never evenknew that we had Germans blow up
(09:21):
a ship in Elliott Bay up hereand I've lived it through my
entire life.
Yeah, no idea, two German spyattacks into North America back
then, and it's not like we're.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
You know, especially around that time it's not like
we're all like, oh, let's nottalk about the Germans and what
the bad things they did, Right,so you'd think they'd be a
little more like, hey,terrorized us.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, yeah, they kind of were.
It's just sort of beenforgotten to time.
We'll talk about that a littlebit more in the upcoming moments
.
So those two small attacksblowing up the water plant, the
water supply in Toronto and theship in Elliott Bay, those
weren't exactly big.
Their third attack, though,that would be very big, and that
would be known as the Black TomIsland incident, ba-na-na-na-na
(10:02):
.
This happened on July 30th 1916.
So shortly around midnight,shortly after midnight, a man
who worked on Black Tom Island,a man named Michael Christoph.
He accepted $500 from Germanspies to get them around
security and act as lookoutwhile they committed acts of
espionage on the island, or actsof sabotage, I should say.
Just so you know, $500 wasworth about $15,000 in today's
(10:25):
money.
So will that $500 be worth itfor this man?
We'll find out shortly.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Well, seeing how you know his name, it doesn't sound
like things went well for him,just the fact that he has a
known name and we know how muchthey paid him.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
This is very true.
If I called him the unknownmillionaire, then we'd we'd be
like, oh, that guy got away withit or we don't know how they
got in there.
That's, that's how he, that'shis happy ending, that is happy.
He's just like off at a beachin cuba or something, fanning
himself and sipping pina coladas.
So, anyways, a small explosionand a small fire at the train
(11:02):
depot, which soon, uh, break out, set by those saboteurs, and,
as we said, there was a lot ofexplosives on this island.
So if there was actually a firecrew, you know, stationed on the
island, you know a little likeemergency fire crew, ambulance
kind of crew thing, well, thesmall explosion at the start
woke up that emergency crew andthey leapt into action.
Well, actually, half of thecrew leapt into action,
(11:23):
apparently, the fire crew showedup and half of them were like
we're going to stop this beforeit gets worse and the other half
was like, oh, we're out, bye.
So, yeah, peace out, we're done.
Yeah, half of them were like,yeah, this is past the point of
containment, we're getting outof here.
Were the people who stayedbehind.
Succeed no 208.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, we're like like .
You got the people who are like, if I could put out the garden
hose, I'm staying, and then I'mnot going to be here.
And then you've got the peoplewho are like run into danger,
let's save things.
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
So those people are far braver, braver than me,
because yeah, I would have been,I would have looked at him like
I'm going to take this time toget what's known as a head start
.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, I'd like to think like if there were people
in danger, I might do somethinglike that.
But if there was this likeproperty of like, yeah, you have
to write me up, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
At least I'll be alive to get the write up,
because otherwise Insurance canhandle this somewhere in the
future, I would imagine.
Yeah, so at 2.08 am the secondand the biggest of the
explosions would go off.
It's estimated this explosionwas between 5.0 and 5.5 on the
Richter scale and sent shrapneland debris flying for miles.
Just so you know, 5.5 on theRichter scale would make it 30
times more powerful than theWorld Trade Center's going down.
(12:37):
That's how big of a force isgoing on here.
The explosion created adetonation wave that traveled at
24,000 feet per second, withenough force to lift
firefighters up and out of theirboots and into the air,
throwing them, you know, I guess, walls through the air,
injuring many of them, killingsome Thousands of women.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
It's always a sign of a big explosion or like
something big and impactful.
When people get flung out oftheir shoes, yeah right, they're
like oh, their shoes are upbehind.
It must have been real bad.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, just some smoldering shoes just sitting
there in the same place thatthey were Scorched body you know
, 25 feet away Great.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
I love like look at that scorched body, like fuck
that scorched body.
Look, his shoes are right here.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Those are still in pretty good condition.
Shoes are expensive back inthese days, so let's take them.
Thousands of windows brokenearly instantly in Manhattan,
with windows also being brokenas far as 25 miles away due to
the shock waves.
The blast was even feltstrongly in Philadelphia, about
90 miles away, and people evenreported being woken up by it in
Maryland, thinking it was anearthquake and that was about
(13:43):
200 miles away.
So yeah, up to 200 miles away,people.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Because I mean, I'm assuming Maryland doesn't get
many earthquakes, or any really.
So I guess they wouldn't know,you know they wouldn't
understand like, oh, this is aquick explosion, or like oh,
this is actual.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Well, also at this time too, there was lots of
immigrants.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
So I mean they probably came from lands with
the.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, because this is like when Ellis Island was at
their hoppinest, kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
So probably a lot of people showing up from
earthquake, earthquake-riddenlands Like California, I guess I
don't know what places areriddled with earthquakes America
, alright, well.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
They came to America, sir, Like shut up.
How about that?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
They just went all the way around the globe and
immigrated to the East Coast thelong way.
The famed St Patrick's Parishin New Jersey had some of its
famous stained glass destroyedin the blast, which is pretty
sad because this was one of themost famous churches in America
at the time, with some oldancient stained glass and big
history, and that whole thingwas just completely destroyed.
The church has actually sinceappeared in the Sopranos Neat.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Always bothers me.
I always hate it when, like Imean art basically, but stained
glass specifically because it'ssuch like, always bothers me.
I always hate it when, like Imean art basically, but, like
you know, stained glassspecifically because it's such
like it wasn't.
You know leonardo da vincialmost a dicaprio leonardo da
vinci?
You know he painted.
I mean it took a lot of talentand like all the stuff that he
painted.
And you know, I'm sure it tooka while.
But stained glass is like, notonly do you know the image
(15:11):
you're going for, but then youalso need to like, first of all
make the glass into the coloryou need, in the shape you need,
and then put it a puzzle, likeit.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
So I don't know when I hear stained glass gets the
story that always bums me outreason stained glass is so
expensive because it does take alot of work and effort to make
a lot of foresight and yeah,it's the foresight is all.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
It's kind of like one of my achilles heel.
It's like all getting from acanvas like, okay, what am I
gonna do, what am I going?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
to do, going together the way it should.
Randomly, yeah, new jersey cityhall sustained significant
damage from this flying debris.
Uh hit and damaged the statueof liberty, including severe
damage to the arm and torch area.
So apparently the shockwavefrom the blast was big enough it
literally moved the entire armover to where it contacted the
head a little bit.
That's how much the actualwhole statue flexed.
(16:03):
This actually caused enoughstructural damage to the statue
that they have since closed offthe torch area.
That's actually what kind ofled to this whole research thing
.
Because there's a lot ofconspiracy theories, because
they don't let you go into thetorch of the statue of liberty
oh, what could be that I didn't,I didn't realize that.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I guess I didn't really take I mean, the reverse
a little bit.
I do remember you mentioningsomething about it on a prior
podcast, or maybe we weretalking about like, about that
uh, about how you can't go up inthe torch, but I guess I didn
didn't realize like it was this.
You know, I haven't heard ofthis, so it's not a surprise.
I didn't realize because Ididn't know what this was.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
But apparently most people don't know about this.
And if you look up, like whyyou can't go up into the Statue
of Liberty arm, there's oh, allsorts of crazy stuff like alien
technology up there, the torch,and it's like this just huge
area where you can wander around.
But no, actually if you seepictures of it, it's like you
know a tiny, thin littlestairwell that goes like a
(16:59):
supply closet size thing andthat's what's up in the torch.
Yeah, I've never been, I'venever seen it, but I've heard
the Statue of Liberty isn't asbig as yeah yeah you, you look
at and you're like, oh my god,that thing's massive, you could
run around in it, but I guessit's big enough that a line of
people can go up there.
Single file and that's about it.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Especially when you're not there, you see
pictures that are a little bitdeceptive.
One thing that springs to mindand like Jenna and I always
point it out when you look atthe pictures of Seattle and the
Space Needle, if you're lookingparticularly like, one of the
famous ones is Frasier.
You know the TV show yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
It looks like the Space Needle is like dominating
the skyline and one of the mostbuildings.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And most pictures you see of Seattle.
It looks like not only is theSpace Needle the biggest thing
around, but it's also like mixedin amongst all the tall
buildings and you're like, no,no, it's way the fuck over there
.
Yeah, the bigger builds are waythe hell over there.
And in the end, yeah, it's big,but it's not that big.
Yeah, it's really not.
(17:59):
If it was with all thebuildings that were taller, you
wouldn't be able to see it,because the buildings would be
taller than it is.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah, compared to the buildings around it, it's
pretty small.
For the most part, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
So it's like it looks real impressive on Frasier, but
in reality like it is.
No, it's not nothing, you know,you go there.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Well, when it was built back in like 1963 or
whatever.
It was actually one of thetaller buildings in Seattle.
It's just skyscrapers have likegotten so much bigger since
then.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, so it's not.
What was once impressive is nolonger impressive.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, because in Seattle there's I think it's
called the Smith Tower orsomething.
At one point it was the tallestbuilding west of the
Mississippi in a novel ofAmerica or in the world or
whatever.
And yeah, if you look at it now, it's still there and it is
like, mmm, it's in the smallerthird of all the buildings
around, like I mean, it isliterally dwarfed by everything
around it.
And it's also kind of likeweird how they made it the
(18:50):
tallest building in the world,because you can tell they sort
of like fudged it a little bit,because it looks like a normal
building and then at the verytop there's like this little
spire that they built that goesup like another four or five
stories.
I hate.
You look at, yeah, you look atyou're just like, oh, the.
The only reason this is thetallest is because they built
that little addition.
Somebody's like, oh, you'reabout 30 feet away from being
tossed building.
They're like, oh well, let'sadd another 40 feet to it.
Look, at least that's what Ialways came across to me.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
If a woman comes in and she stands at four foot tall
, but she has a beehive on herhead, so an additional two feet.
She is not now six feet tall,she is still four foot tall.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
One thing I think that throws off people's
perspective of the Statue ofLiberty 2 is also Ghostbusters 2
, where they're riding around.
I was just thinking about that.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I was literally just thinking about when you were
talking about, like, how youcouldn't get up in the thing.
The first thing that popped inmy head was Ghostbusters 2.
Yep.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Go there and there's spring slime all over the thing,
Like we're going to make thisstatue walk.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
In fact I was going to ask you when we were talking
about the size Like is thataccurate, the size of the Statue
of Liberty with Ghostbusters 2?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
But I get around asking.
Actually, if you click underthe go under our text channels
on discord and click under thegeneral tab, I sent you a
picture of like the uh ladderthat takes you up to the torch
and how tiny it is and also whatit's like inside the skull or
the side, the crown.
So is it big enough?
Yeah, it's probably big enough,I don't know.
I mean it's literally bigenough for like three
ghostbusters to stand in thereand that's about it.
Yeah, it's big enough for likeone single file line kind of
make it through therecomfortably.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
So that was plausible .
But yeah, like again the thingthat people really think about,
because even I thought the torchin my head that thing is
massive.
You know, in my head the Statueof Liberty can like pole dance
in the Sears Tower.
You know like that's how big itis in my head.
But you know, as we've talkedabout, it's not.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yep, yeah, I'm like looking at a picture of the
torch and it's not a whole lotbigger than a human, to be
honest, like you can see peoplelike standing next to it working
on it.
It's like, eh, it's not thatbig, but yeah, if you go online,
grandpa snuck me back up therein the 80s blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, apparently they're alllying, they're all dirty, dirty
(20:57):
liars, dirty liars.
Yeah, I know, I was verydisillusioned when I just
realized that people would go onthe internet and lie for no
real reason.
Liars on the internetEverywhere.
Also, in our little Discordchat you can also see the
aftermath of the explosion, thevery last picture I sent there.
Yeah, everything's kind of justturned into a fine dust on that
island.
Yeah, man.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
There is not much on that island, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
You can see some like train wheels and stuff that
were like too solid to get blownup.
But yeah, it's um, that wholeisland just kind of went poof.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Which also strangely took care of the garbage problem
, which also strangely took careof their garbage problem.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yes, actually it did so.
It was approximately $100,000worth of damage was done to the
Statue of Liberty, and that'spretty significant.
How much About $300,000 inthen-days money.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, which is about $300,000 in then-days money.
I only picked up dollars.
I'm like, okay, wait, talkabout what.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
You're like, wait a minute, dollars is modern day
money.
Back then they used shekels.
What's going on, sean?
Immigrants in nearby EllisIsland had to be evacuated
temporarily into ManhattanBecause not only flying debris
and damages and stuff, and alsopeople were wondering If these
were like attacks that weregoing to go on.
Hey, did we just get bombed, orwhatever?
(22:13):
Well, I guess there reallywasn't a ton of bombs back then
because, you know, planes werekind of new, but artillery,
shells and stuff existed and whoknows, maybe we're getting
artillery from the shore orsomething.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, people were in a bit of a panic during all this
going on because also you knowjust, an island's exploding next
to you I mean, especially sinceyou know they're talking about
like yeah, even though we mightnot be involved, people do know
there's a war going on andsuddenly there's a huge
explosion.
That'd be like I don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
I'd be like ah yeah, and then the old drunk uncles in
the corner would be like I toldyou it would happen.
You all said I was a liar, but Itold you it's damn French.
Nearby Fort Wood, at the mainentrance, a four-inch thick iron
door was actually knocked offof its hinges from that blast
too.
Like the whole door got likeknocked off its hinges and like
(22:58):
pushed forwards into the uh fort.
So that was pretty impressivetoo.
Following that giant explosion,uh, several smaller explosions
rocked the area for severalhours, even days too, you know,
like unexploded munitions thatwould just randomly go off, or a
stick of dynamite that justeventually got hot enough to
blow up.
So it was pretty dangerousaround that area for a good long
while.
Afterwards too, just wanderingaround taking inventory of stuff
(23:20):
, and all of a sudden, you know,explosion happens underneath
you.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
You wonder even like today, all of a sudden, I know
we're like ah, yeah, just stuffthat has a.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
we call this a hundred-year dynamite.
If it gets disturbed, it won'tblow up for a hundred years, A
hundred years later, 2016.
Boom.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, hell yeah.
No, you know, I've been tryingto find, like someone posting a
side-by-side image of the Statueof Liberty from Ghostbusters to
the reality.
Nobody, there's not a singleimage that has like them
side-by-side.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Probably everybody was just like that's a stupid
thing to do.
Who would ever think that theywould want that?
But yeah, the only thing.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
The only thing I saw was talking about um cloverfield
.
Remember cloverfield, even ifyou haven't seen the movie.
The trailer I do know of it,yeah yeah, the statue of
liberty's head got tossed and islike oh my god.
And I do remember in that moviethey had to make it way bigger
because otherwise when they didthe actual size it was very
impressive yeah, it was like thesize of a small bus kind of
thing.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, right, that's, that's not much.
But yeah, if you have somethingthat's like the size of a
building, just like rolling down, uh, main street that's it
wasn't quite that big, but itwas.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
It was actually like big and intimidating and they're
like, yeah, no it would be.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
yeah, Hundreds of injuries were reported.
Only seven fatalities werereported, by the papers actually
, which doesn't seem that big.
But also, as people will pointout, there was a lot of hobos
and black tom fishermen aroundthe island that nobody really
cared if they got blown up.
So, yeah, the actual fatalitieswas probably significantly
higher than seven.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Once again talk about that time period.
It's like reported.
The big quotations are reported.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, it was like seven white Christian men were
killed and others Amongst others.
Yeah, amongst others Amongstthose people.
But, yeah, like the sevenfatalities were the barge
captain, new Jersey PoliceDepartment officer, james F
Doherty, lehigh Valley Railroadchief of police, joseph Layden,
and also a the sad fatality ofthis all, a 10-week-old infant
(25:20):
named Arthur Tossin was thrownfrom his crib a mile away from
the blast and the force wasenough to kill him, or so the
parents say.
I mean, like seconds beforethat happened, they might have
just like spiked the baby like afootball.
Yeah, he just like spike thebaby like a football.
Yeah, he's like, oh, I hatethis fucking baby.
Yeah, wait, he's a hugeexplosion, here's my opportunity
is this my baby?
(25:41):
the neighbors, yeah, yeah I meanit is a possibility.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, they go the paper's like I hear your baby
died.
I'm like, yes, blood hair, blueeyes, well, front page.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yep, exactly.
So, yeah, in the end, just that, in one night, six piers, 13
warehouses and dozens of railedcars just simply vanished, and
their place was a 300 by 150foot crater filled with
contaminated water and debris.
Because you know, when you'vegot a bunch of explosives
exploding, that does leave sometoxic waste behind.
(26:15):
Yeah, all the blasting residueand nitroglycerin and this and
that, not good times.
The overall property damagefrom all this was assessed at
$20 million, or $560 million intoday's money.
News of the blast reachesPresident Woodrow Wilson and he
remarks of the incident as quoteunquote a regrettable incident
(26:36):
at a private railway terminalwhich is a really clever way of
being like yep, real clever wayof being like this isn't a
government thing, All thoseexplosives, that's a private
sector.
They can deal with that Wow.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
That was so naked, just like oh this sucks, this
happened on private land,exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Sucking for that railroad company.
Thankfully, we are the Americangovernment.
This has nothing to do with us,as they just walk away.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I mean, couldn't even just leave it for like later,
or implied Like oh, this is aterrible tragedy, you know, mr
Wilson.
Mr Wilson, what do you thinkabout who's responsible for this
?
Oh well, you see, it happenedon private land.
So about who's responsible forthis?
Speaker 1 (27:17):
oh well, you see it happened on private land.
So we had yeah, it had to bepart of the main statement.
Yep, however, he did uh,because uh it was during wars
were going on across the seas,they decided to uh send out
edgar e clark of the interstatecommerce commission to uh
investigate and see whatactually happened at this
explosion.
And and investigation wentabound and one thing they
learned is, you know, that giantbarge that was just covered in
(27:38):
TNT like 100,000 pounds of TNTon it.
Yeah, that exploded.
Well, apparently, that bargewas supposed to have left
several days before, but thething was is the waters were
very uncertain and unsafe aroundthere.
So in order to leave, theywould have had to have paid a
$25 towing charge to have like auh tow boats tow them out to
(27:59):
the open sea.
So it was safer, but theydidn't want to spend that $25.
So they're just like, eh, we'lljust sit at the port for a
while and wait it out, likewhat's the worst that could
happen?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Well, I mean, look at him.
Well, I mean, the captain ofthat barge did die, so I guess
paid for it with his own life.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, very true, cheap ass.
Of course, you never know likeback.
You know back in these days, Imean here my, you know, if
people just disappeared, they'relike you'll leave for milk and
never come back.
They're like oh man, I hate myjob, I hate my wife, I hate my
kids.
Oh, a giant explosion.
I guess I'm gonna move acrosscountry now and that's it.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
No one ever held back .
Then you didn't have to moveacross country, you could move
like two towns over five milesaway.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Very true, yeah, very true like 25 years later, like
what they stop, like they'retraveling through the country
and they stop by a store likefrank.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, it was not hard to disappear back then.
Those days Ah, those were thedays, Right, I know.
It's probably the freedom ofbeing able just to abandon
everything you have and justnever come back.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
I have no intention of like doing that, but, man,
you can imagine just like allthis debt just crushing us.
You know what?
Let's just go, you know thisdebt just crushing us.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
You know what?
Let's just go.
You know like this is gonna golive on a beach somewhere in the
middle or, you know, in centralamerica and just see what
happens no, like again, not evencentral america.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Hey, let's move like one state over and, yeah right,
start fresh.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Like uh, I went from townsend to I don't know, my
name is uh thomas google yep,just nail a note on your door as
you leave Died from the plague,and then nobody will question
it and just be like, well, he'sdead, I guess we'll just rent
out his apartment now.
So when it actually came towhat caused the blast, the
investigators first thought itwas going to be smudge pots were
(29:47):
behind the whole thing, becauseapparently smudge pots is an
old school, just like a giantoil burning furnace that you
could use for Like heat or toget rid of like mosquitoes or
other various bugs.
And shortly before the firehappened, a bunch of smudge Pots
got lit up because they werehaving bad mosquito Problems
that night.
So at first Everybody was like,oh well, that's what it is,
good job, everybody, we're alldone, yay.
(30:07):
And they almost like sealed upthe investigation On that, just
like right off the bat.
Just like, well, smudge pots,people weren't careful, that's
what blew up a whole smudge potthing.
But then they're just like, hey,those germans started attacking
us in other parts of thecountry.
Let's investigate a little bitfurther.
Maybe we should uh, you knowfigure out if this has to do
with that war over yonder.
So the government decided hey,let's go assign the fledgling
(30:31):
bureau of investigation to thiscase.
They can figure it out.
There are, you know, you know,top dogs.
The only problem is they werereally small at the time only
260 agents at the time butbecause of this and other things
, this group would eventuallybecome the Federal Bureau of
Investigation or the FBI.
So investigating this is kindof what started the FBI for
America.
Yay, yay, right, yeah, yay,exactly Yay.
(30:56):
America, yay, yay, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Exactly.
Yay, the only thing I think ofis like if the FBI didn't do all
the heinous shit the FBI did,then another, you know it'd be
like we'd be talking about, Idon't know, the.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
International Bureau of Investigation yeah,
International.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Bureau of Dickheads or something.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, exactly, they would have done the exact same
thing.
Yeah, fbi, you're not soimportant.
If you didn't do all thisheinous stuff, somebody else
would have.
I think you're so cool.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Right, you think you're so original.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Since the precursor to the FBI was so understaffed,
president Woodrow Wilson alsosent in the Secret Service to
help them out.
And also they teamed up withthe New York Bomb Squad and they
all joined to form an action,uh, or an investigating super
group that all the kids thoughtwas cool.
Comic books and massmerchandising spree was to
follow the investigation crewyou know what's so stupid.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
You know it's so stupid for a heartbeat, just a
heartbeat, and it's so stupid.
I thought you're gonna say newyork jets, like fucking
scooby-doo, like come on, scoobyand the new york jets.
Let's go figure out why thishappened.
Why is this huge explosion?
Speaker 1 (32:04):
oh, look, it's joe namath to help us out.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Joe namath hi, kids wanna watch me throw a football
kelly jean joe namath.
What's all this?
What's all this?
Powder burns.
We found a small infant.
Is it white?
No, then who cares?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
that's pretty accurate for the time.
So after a year ofinvestigating in 1917 they
finally get their big break andthey find out about that Michael
Kristoff guy and the $500 theGerman spies gave him.
So they swoop in and they pickhim up and they start
interrogating him.
And in the middle of all thisinterrogation, just like in a
Law and Order episode, somebodybusts in and goes like hey man,
you guys messed up all thispaperwork.
(32:44):
You gotta let him go until youget all this paperwork sorted
out.
So they let him go run into thecourts, get their paperwork all
squared away, go back to arrestthe dude and surprise, surprise
, he's gone.
Nowhere to be found, you think.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
You just got a shit ton of money and like, as we
were just talking about onetalent over, yeah, exactly Like
let's go, Fuck this, let's go.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Yep, yeah, you know.
As soon as they let him go,that man just hopped on a bus
and he just did not look back.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Oh yeah, the moment he walked out the door, Yakety
Sax kicks in.
He, like sped, walked to hishouse, started packing shit up,
ran out the door.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
That money probably didn't last him too long because
eventually it did turn out thatthey caught up with him in like
various other prisons he wasgetting in and out of over the
years from other stuff that hedid.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, apparently he wasn't a great guy Cause, yeah,
he fled from the police and heimmediately went back into
prison for other stuff.
I guess you've got a bunch ofmoney like that.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
And especially for back then, lay low.
Yeah, yeah, you go, you find anice little place and you
settled down, unless he wasusing it for, like I don't know,
the the love of the game.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
He's like, I know I've got all this money here,
here, but it did only translateto fifteen thousand dollars
after uh oh okay, yeah, you know, yeah, I mean it's 500 bucks
back then, which is 15 000.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Uh, when, for some reason, I guess in my head you
did say that my in my head, as Iwas talking just now, I was.
I translate 15 000 back then,not thinking about what's got
you, you're thinking he'srunning around like a couple
hundred grand okay, fair enough.
Yeah, you know, he ran away.
Great, I could totally see why?
Speaker 1 (34:12):
yeah, he probably ran away and drank all that money
away in like a sitting orsomething like that.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, it was like one night he decided to go and just
you know, go whoring and he'slike wakes up the next day.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
He's like, well there that went During that whoring
time.
He probably caught somethingbad, because he died of
tuberculosis in 1928 while inprison.
That's got to be a bummer of ofa way to go in prison with
tuberculosis, because you're notgetting great medical treatment
there back in 1928.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
If any, your treatment was stay in this room.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
They probably just pull you aside and just have
some twisted-looking Germandoctor do quote-unquote
procedures on you.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Herman.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Goering, he's going to find out what's wrong with
you, sir.
Is he going to fix me?
No, no, no, no, no, he's justgoing to find out what's wrong
with you.
As far as the actual Germansaboteurs who did the explosion
and the whole setup thing, oneof them was actually caught in
the Mexican border in 1980,trying to escape America, or,
you know, just trying to escapewhile the heat died down.
1980?
(35:09):
, 1918.
Oh, okay, that's like 1980.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
He's like 1980s, like Jesus Christ.
How did they even know he was?
That would be amazing.
We had this old assmotherfucker across the bridge.
He's German.
He clearly had something to dowith the bombing.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
You're at the Mexican border in 1980, and there's
like this 95-year-old dude justlike mean-mugging, this other
like 95-year-old dude I think Iknow you from somewhere.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Black Tom Island.
You blew it up.
World War I and II and Vietnamand the Korean War and all those
shits passed by.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Even better too is the German spy.
Sneakily he's got like theold-school German pointy hat
from World War I.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
With that like spike on top.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yep, exactly Were you from World War I Nein.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Good times, yeah, it's good times.
So well, I mean, I guess, Imean I don't even know how they
would like link it, unless hehad stuff, that because yeah, it
was 1918 I guess, but like itwas the mexican border, it's not
, they didn't say how theycaught him, because it's not
like they got had a fax machineback, then they just faxed the
picture down to him or something.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
I mean so yeah, not exactly sure how they caught him
, because it's not like they hada fax machine back, then they
just faxed a picture down to himor something.
So yeah, not exactly sure howthey caught him.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Unless he was like oh sorry, I need to declare I
bombed Black Tom Island, jesus.
I was asking if he had anyapples or anything, but okay.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Hey, hey German dude, why are you wearing this shirt
that says blew up?
Black tom island, and all I gotwas this lousy t-shirt with a
with a like a picture of himwith two thumbs who blew up
black tom island.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
This guy, the further shirt, him like for their
shirts.
Two thumbs, the bombs, likeabout to explode.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
The back of the shirt's the explosion ah, ask me
about what I was doing on blacktom island.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Two years ago.
I like how you used two yearsago because it going forward for
the rest of it.
You wore this shirt 20 yearslater.
Guess what I was doing?
A black tom island two yearsago.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Originally I was gonna update the shirt every
year.
But it turned out to be veryexpensive, right?
Custom printing presses weren'ta thing back then.
I only did it like three times,then I realized it was too much
.
Right Now I just take a sharpieand I just draw a one in front
of whatever number is there he'sgot his shirt covered in
sharpie.
So the other German spy that weknow of, that night he actually
(37:28):
managed to escape capture andkind of went around doing spy
stuff all throughout World WarII until the the russians
captured him and killed him.
So that probably wasn't funeither.
I can't picture being capturedas a spy by russians turning out
to be a good thing yeah, Idon't, I don't think, um, the
russians are.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
They are not exactly known for, uh, hospitality, yeah
, hospitality and light touch.
Yeah, oh, this guy is, uh, yeah, he's, he's got information we
want.
So let's just kind of we'lltalk sternly to him.
You know, I'll count to three,very, very angrily.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah, it was like world war one back in those days
.
They just stuck you in a roomwith a horny rat sputin and let
him have his way with you, right?
Yeah, this giant horse dick.
Yeah, just like said in thesong.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Oh it was like nothing, Go ahead.
I didn't know where I was goingwith it.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Well, I was going to say I love this.
There's this one meme whereit's like that song Rasputin by
Boney M yeah, Rasputin'sgrandchildren were alive when
that song came out.
So there's, a nine-year-oldbusiness and all of a sudden a
song about how good yourgranddad fucks comes on the
radio.
It was song about how good yourgranddad fucks comes on the
radio.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
It was like grandpa, I mean.
But let's be real, of all thethings people said about your
grandfather, that was probablylike on the, the happy end yeah,
honestly that what.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
That is kind of like one of the nicer things they
could have said about him on,things could have gone a lot
worse, I guess I assume there'sstill relatives around right.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I mean, or did they do that with the hitler family?
Did or like we're to end ourbloodline?
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, I don't really know.
Hmm, Speaking of Russians,though, one side effect from all
this happening was, uh, Russiawas not happy about that
explosion because, uh, that wasall there, more, mostly their
arms and shipments.
They were on that Islandwaiting coming over to them.
So, uh, they were not exactlyhappy with the Lehigh Valley
Railroad Company, and theydecide to sue the pants off them
(39:14):
for gross negligence, as youknow you tend to do.
But in a fun moment oflawyering, the lawsuit take
place right after that Bolshevikrevolution.
So the government of Russiachanged hands and the railroad
company was like hey, man, thatcontract we signed was for the
previous government, not withthis one.
That just came because ofrevolution, so we should be off
the hook.
I mean, it sounds very lawyerly,and of course it sounds very
(39:36):
lawyerly, be like yeah, well, Imean, we didn't sign it with
this king.
Yeah, that would be kind oflike be like hey, we signed this
with the blast president, notwith the current one.
But the courts did not agreewith that.
Ok, yeah, of course, do notagree.
In fact, it almost kind ofbackfired on the uh uh, railroad
(39:57):
company, because I guess theformer remnants of the old
government were still kind ofhanging around in some uh way or
another.
So, uh, with the method thatthe railroad company tried,
there was a chance they openedthemselves to get sued by both
governments, the previous oneand the older one, or the
previous one the current one,yeah.
So they kind of had to like dosome last minute, uh,
apologizing, of course you'd.
No, no, we didn't mean that weweren't trying this, please
don't sue us twice.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
I was drunk, it's Russia.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
As a fellow Russian, you know what it's like being
drunk around the clock.
I'm drunk right now.
It is the Russian way of things.
So the cost of all thatexploded munitions and property
damage was valued at $50 million, and that's basically what I
think the Russians got rewardedwith.
Somewhere around $50 milliontoo, and all this basically got
lumped into that giant $33billion of post-World War I
(40:46):
reparations that Germany wasstuck with.
Remember that, nate?
Remember how well that workedout?
Oh, yeah, it worked outbeautifully.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I think bad happened.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Oh well, germany handled it in the best way
possible.
See, what they actually did isyou know those Capital One cards
you get where it's liketransfer all your balances to
this card and get a low interestrate.
Well, they did that.
They just got a Capital Onecard and they transferred all
$33 billion to that and thenthey made like two payments and
then they just stopped paying it.
They changed their address acouple of times, moved PO boxes
(41:19):
and they just waited for thewhole thing to get forgotten
about.
So that's how it worked out.
Sounds like a way to go.
Yeah, it's the American way ofavoiding debt.
The Germans were pioneers inthat.
Yes, I am joking about how theydid that.
Somewhere there's poor peoplelistening to the podcast.
Be like yes, I know that method.
Right, consolidate all yourdebt to one company and then
screw over that company.
One more big fallout from thiswhole thing One of the
investigators from all this,from the island blowing up, was
(41:41):
Harvard Law School graduate,john McCloy, who had gone on to
help create the policy ofJapanese internment camps in
World War II, using this BlackTom Island as an example of why
we need them saying that, hey,if we don't lock up all these
Japanese, we could haveourselves another Black Tom
Island incident with terrorisms,and even FDR used Black Tom
Island to justify the internmentcamps going on.
Actual saying is we don't wantanother Black Tom Island.
(42:04):
So there you go.
This was used for racism yearson afterwards and that's pretty
much the end of the story.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Yeah, I always hate the internment camp stuff
because, yeah you, just at thesame time there were germans
walking around, you know, but ofcourse you know, oh, that's
color difference there.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Racism, yay, yay.
Well, you gotta do that oldfamily guy thing where you whip
out that uh color gradient thingand it blows oh yeah it's like
not okay, yeah right, that'spretty much how it works.
The same with the catalogingall the dead people on Black Tom
Island.
They probably just went aroundwith one of those gradient cards
like those little paintswatches, and just hold it up
next to the skin color and belike, eh, it doesn't count, eh,
(42:43):
yeah, so did you learn?
Anything fun and exciting fromthis Nate.
I did actually.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
I mean, we talked about how the Statue of Liberty
was damaged and, you know,obviously like one of the
excuses for internment camps,and just you know it was, I
don't know, it was veryenjoyable.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
How easy it was to just disappear back in the day.
Yeah, it counts for all thedads who went out to go get grab
a gallon of milk or somecigarettes and never came back.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Right, you come to find out later on.
They have like two morefamilies.
Yeah, exactly, you weren't eventhe first family, right, you're
the second?
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yeah, why did daddy leave us?
Oh, he went back to hisoriginal family.
You mean his second family?
No, his original family.
We were the second family,unfortunately.
So do, do, do, do, do, boink.
I should probably stop therecording before I forget Doink,
doink, doink, because sometimesI wonder what happens.
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