On the 30th July 1916, an explosion took place in New York that was the equivalent of an earthquake measuring between 5.0 and 5.5 on the Richter scale and was felt as far away as Philadelphia. Windows were broken as far as 25 miles (40 km) away, including thousands in Lower Manhattan. Some window panes in Times Square were even shattered. The explosion caused the destruction of $20,000,000 ($500 million in 2022 dollars) worth of military goods and even damaged the Statue of Liberty.
Until very recently, I had never heard of the Black Tom explosion (I came across a video on YouTube discussing it). I wasn't the only one, I read dozens of comments from people saying that they had never heard of this dramatic turning point in the history of WW1. I even called my fiancé (who is American) and asked him about this incident, and he had no idea what I was talking about. However, there's photos and even film footage of the aftermath of the explosion. There's newspaper articles and front pages reporting on the incident. There have been books written about the incident. But for some strange reason, a large proportion of the general population have never heard of the Black Tom explosion and the information regarding the incident is very sparse and limited which only adds to the mystery surrounding this "infamous" event.
Could the reason for this collective memory loss be due to the Mandela Effect? You are probably aware of the Mandela Effect theory but in case you aren't I shall quickly explain what it is. According to Very Well Mind, "The Mandela Effect refers to a situation in which a large mass of people believes that an event occurred when it did not...The term "Mandela Effect" was first coined in 2009 by Fiona Broome when she created a website to detail her observance of the phenomenon. Broome was at a conference talking with other people about how she remembered the tragedy of former South African president Nelson Mandela's death in a South African prison in the 1980s." Obviously, Mandela didn't die in prison and went on to become president of South Africa, eventually dying in 2013.
The Mandela Effect has always been a point of fascination for me and I have always considered it to be an urban myth (something not to be taken seriously). However, I consider the confusion and mis-remembering of the Black Tom explosion to be the strongest example of evidence of the Mandela Effect. There are many inconsistences surrounding this historical event which I want to discuss here.
Firstly, the number of deaths varies dramatically. According to the main article page on Wikipedia, the total number of deaths is listed as 4. However, other sites have stated the number of deaths as 7. I have also seen the total number of 7, 19 and even 50 deaths. It seems very bizarre when you consider that we know the exact total of people who died when the Titanic sank: 1500 people.
We could argue that during the confusion and tight propaganda restrictions of WW1, the real number of deaths in the Black Tom explosion wouldn't have been disclosed to the public. Although, at the time, America was considered neutral and wasn't involved in the war. So, I would believe that the death toll would have been carefully recorded and reported.
However, two newspapers from the time report drastically different numbers of death (4 vs. 50) which really confuses me...I could understand a slight difference, but those two amounts seem very far apart from each other. Even on the plaque at the site's visitor centre it states " It is not known how many died." If the Black Tom explosion occurred, then surely someone would have taken the time to note down the casualties?
Secondly, the Black Tom explosion is said to have caused significant damage to the Statue of Liberty, "Due to the damage the statue sustained on July 30, 1916, its torch has been closed to the public for the last century." However, people are the internet claim that they have been inside the torch (refer to the reddit post in the sources linked below). Personally, I don't believe people have been inside the torch since 1916 and they're mis-remembering. However, I do find it odd that the majority of the public aren't aware of the reason why they can't go inside the torch.
What puzzles me the most, is the fact that there is a lack of books and texts written about the explosion. Perhaps the most "well-known" is "Sabotage at Black Tom Island" by Jules Witcover which was published back in 1989. There is also a 1964 article in the "The American Legion Magazine" which discusses the incident but the information contained in this article seems very light on detail (http://www.getnj.com/jchist/blacktoma.shtml).
I also find it very strange that there is a lack of newspaper front pages and articles from 1916 when the incident took place. Surely something this important would have been covered by a range of different outlets? Compare the two snapshots below of the newspapers covering The Lusitania sinking and the Black Tom explosion...Doesn't it seem odd that there's very few newspaper front pages for the Black Tom explosion? One of the front page's doesn't even mention the explosion, so I am unsure why it comes up in the Google image search.
One would think with the attack on 9/11 there would have been a renewed interest in the Black Tom explosion. This doesn't appear to be the case. I could only find one news article from 2001 which discussed the explosion, and the information contained in that piece was again very limited and sparse.
According to a guide on NJCU website, an individual was believed to have been guilty for setting the fires. However, this person (Michael Kristoff) died in 1928. Was Kristoff set up to take the blame, and if so, then who is really behind the explosion?
"A suspect in the incident was Michael Kristoff, a 23-year old immigrant living with relatives in nearby Bayonne and a former employer at the Tidewater Oil Company. Kristoff is said to have started the fires at Black Tom with incendiary devices in exchange for five hundred dollars. Kristoff died in a Staten Island hospital in 1928. On one side, officials at Black Tom were charged with "criminal and gross negligence" and, on the other, documentation was found regarding German espionage in the case. No one, however, was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In 1939, after seventeen years of deliberation, the German-American Mixed Claims Commission claimed that Germany was responsible for the sabotage. "
So, the question is: Did the explosion at Black Tom island ever take place? I think it might have done, but I don't think it was carried out by the Germans. Instead, I believe it was carried out by the US government and the reason there's so little record of it, is because they're attempted to hide their tracks. We were meant to forget it so we wouldn't investigate it further and discover the holes in the story. The reason why I believe this is the case, is as follows:
"The sabotage techniques used by Germany, and the United States' declaration of war on Germany, led to the creation of the Espionage Act, which passed by Congress in late 1917."
The Espionage Act is an act to punish acts of interference with the foreign relations, and the foreign commerce of the United States, to punish espionage, and better to enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and for other purposes. In 2001 as a reaction to 9/11 the US government passed the Patriot Act, which was passed with the stated goal of tightening U.S. national security, particularly as it related to foreign terrorism. Strange, how history repeats itself, right?
So, was the Black Tom explosion used as an excuse to try and push the American public to back the country joining the first World War. Did the government not attract enough support until The Lusitania incident? The more I dig into the Black Tom explosion, the more questions I am left with.
What do you think? Is the Black Tom Explosion really proof that the Mandela Effect is real or is it proof that history has been rewritten and covered up by the powers that be?
Articles & sites cited:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Tom_explosion
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-mandela-effect-4589394
https://www.history.com/news/the-black-tom-explosion
https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/comments/qk254j/does_anyone_remember_being_able_to_go_into_the/
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2810304-sabotage-at-black-tom-island