cleveland
In late April 1919, anarchists, a group of people who believe that “society should have no government, laws, police, or any other authority. Most anarchists in the US advocate change through non-violent, non-criminal means. However, a small minority believed change could only be accomplished through violence and criminal acts” decided to take matters into their own hands. If you ask me, their actions proved without a doubt, why we need thinks like government (but not BIG government), laws, police, and other authority figures. In these bombings, radicals mailed over 30 booby trap dynamite-filled bombs to prominent politicians and appointees, including the Attorney General of the United States, as well as justice officials, newspaper editors, and businessmen, such as John D Rockefeller, and the mayor of Seattle, Washington. All but one of the bombs were addressed to high-level officials, but strangely, one bomb was notably addressed to the home of a Federal Bureau of Investigation field agent, Rayme Weston Finch, who had been tasked with investigating the Galleanists, and who in 1918 had arrested two prominent Galleanists while leading a police raid on the offices of their publication Cronaca Sovversiva. No one was killed in these bombings, but unfortunately, one senator’s maid lost her hands.
With the epic failure of the first bombings fresh in their minds, the anarchists decided to try again. On June 2, 1919, in seven US cities, all within approximately 90 minutes of each other, bombs once again rock the area. These bombs were much bigger. Explosions took place in some of the most significant urban areas in America, including New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Patterson, New Jersey. It is believed that the bombers were most likely disciples of Luigi Galleani, an extremely radical anarchist who pushed for violence to rid the world of laws and capitalism. The bombs exploded on June 2 were much larger than those sent in April. They comprised up to 25 pounds of dynamite packaged with heavy metal slugs, which were designed to act as shrapnel. The bombs were sent to government officials who had endorsed anti-sedition laws and deportation of immigrants suspected of crimes or associated with illegal movements, as well as judges who had sentenced anarchists to prison.
One of the bombs was set off by a militant anarchist named Carlo Valdinoci, who was a former editor of the Galleanist publication Cronaca Sovversiva and close associate of Luigi Galleani. Sovversiva planted the bomb, but as he as he set it, it blew up the front of newly appointed Attorney General A Mitchell Palmer’s home in Washington, DC. Unfortunately for Sovversiva, the bomb exploded too early, and he was killed in the very blast he created. At the time, a young Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt lived across the street and were also shaken by the blast. That bombing was just one in a series of coordinated attacks that day on judges, politicians, law enforcement officials, and others in eight cities nationwide.
Within minutes of the bombing of US Attorney General Palmer’s home, more were exploding in other cities, including Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Here, two bombs exploded within seconds of each other under the porch of the rectory of the Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church, caving in the porch and shattering every window in the rectory and those in the basement. The church was still smoldering when another bomb exploded less than a mile away at the home of Philadelphia jeweler Louis Jajieky. That also seems like an unlikely target, given the political nature of most of the bombs. The interior of the Jajieky residence was utterly demolished, leaving only the exterior four walls standing. 
While the anarchists were persistent, they were not especially “good” anarchists. During these bombings and simultaneous explosions in six other cities, none of the men who were being targeted were killed, but one bomb took the life of New York City night watchman William Boehner. Each of the bombs was delivered with several copies of a pink flyer titled “Plain Words,” which read, “War, Class war, and you were the first to wage it under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order, in the darkness of your laws. There will have to be bloodshed; we will not dodge; there will have to be murder: we will kill because it is necessary; there will have to be destruction; we will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.”
It was discovered that the flyer was printed in a printing shop operated by two anarchists, Andrea Salsedo, who was a typesetter, and Roberto Elia, who was a compositor. Bothe of them were known Galleanists. Rather that go to jail, Salsedo committed suicide. Elia was given the opportunity to testify about his role, and thereby avoid deportation, but he refused the offer. Unfortunately, the prosecutors could not obtain enough evidence to proceed with a criminal trial. Authorities continued to deport known Galleanists using the Anarchist Exclusion Act and related statutes.
The predecessor to the FBI, the federal investigation in Philadelphia, headed by Special Agent Todd Daniel and the Bureau of Investigation’s Acting Director, William Flynn had been investigating these anarchists. Days after the bombings, Special Agent Daniel said, “The terrorist movement is national in scope, and its headquarters may be located in this city [Philadelphia].” Daniel also noted the large number of “anarchists in this city and so many places used by them for meeting places.” Daniel’s first thought was that the perpetrators of the Philadelphia bombings were members of the Industrial Workers of the Word (a leftist union that embraced socialistic principles). On June 5, federal and local investigators were tracking down members of the “bomb-throwing squad,” which was said to have included women. They had 12 radicals suspected of having a hand in the city’s attacks under constant surveillance.
At the time of the bombings, there was already a lot of anxiety in America. The world was in the middle of a deadly wave of the pandemic flu, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the ensuing over-hyped “Red Scare,” and sometimes violent labor strikes across the country. The attacks it engendered angered Americans. People 
wanted answers and they wanted a severe response. The Attorney General, looking to make a bid for the presidency, didn’t want to stir up a revolution, so he was ready to oblige. He created a small division to gather intelligence on the radical threat and placed a young Justice Department lawyer named J Edgar Hoover in charge. Hoover collected and organized every intelligence gathered by the Bureau of Investigation (the FBI’s predecessor) and other agencies to identify anarchists most likely involved in violent activity. Even with all the “investigating,” the bombings were never officially pinned on anyone. They did arrest, under recently passed laws like the Sedition Act, suspected radicals and foreigners identified by Hoover’s group, including well-known leaders Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. With much public fanfare in December, several radicals were put on a ship, dubbed the “Red Ark” or “Soviet Ark” by the press, and deported to Russia. Basically, that ended all the repercussions over the 1919 Anarchist Bombings.
Pretty much everyone these days has been to a music concert. It may have been Rock-and-Roll, Country, Pop, Rap, or any number of others, but concerts are here to stay. So, how did they get here? The event that is now recognized as history’s first major rock-and-roll show actually started out as a dance called the Moondog Coronation Ball, held of March 21, 1952, in Cleveland, Ohio. It was initiated by host Alan Freed, at the suggestion of Cleveland record-store owner Leo Mintz, who decided to sponsor three hours of late-night programming on WJW to showcase rhythm-and-blues music. Alan Freed was then installed as host. Freed quickly took to the task, adopting a new, hip persona and vocabulary that included liberal use of the phrase “rock and roll” to describe the music he was now promoting. It must have been an exciting time for him, to be there for the invention of concerts.
The name of the event came from Alan Freed himself, who hosted the enormously popular “Moondog Show” on Cleveland AM radio station WJW. He was initially hired in 1951 to be the host of a classical-music program, but when Mintz told Freed about the trend he was watching among his young customers…of all races toward rhythm-and-blues records by black musicians, Freed took his career in a different direction. The two men got together and decided to promote the new show by having a dance and concert to promote those hot new artists. With that, the Moondog Coronation Ball was born. With the promotion kicked into high gear on the local radio station, tickets sold out in a single day. Still, that didn’t stop thousands of teenagers from lining up outside the biggest venue in town in the hours before show time. These days, we would think a riot was about to take place, and…maybe it was. It was a chilly Friday night in Cleveland, and outside the Cleveland Arena the scene would look quite familiar to anyone who has ever attended a major rock concert. But no one on this particular night had ever even heard of a “rock concert” before, much less stood in line for one.
On tap for “The Moondog Coronation Ball” were headliners Paul Williams and his Hucklebuckers, as well as Tiny Grimes and the Rocking Highlanders (a black instrumental group that performed in Scottish kilts). While musicians who have to cancel, or problems with equipment have been known to shut down an event, no one could have expected that the incredible demand for tickets proved to be the event’s undoing. The problem was exacerbated by massive ticket counterfeiting and possibly by overbooking on the part of the event’s sponsors. The arena had a capacity of 10,000 people, but an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 fans turned out for an event. Those fans who could not get in, though they held a ticket, legal or not, were trying to gain entry. Less than an hour into the show, the massive overflow crowd broke through the gates that were keeping them outside. In an effort to save lives, the police quickly moved in to stop the show almost as soon as it began. The angry fans 
wanted an explanation. On the radio the very next evening, Alan Freed offered an apology to listeners who had tried to attend the canceled event. The only thing he could do was to be honest with them and apologize. Freed told his fans, “If anyone…had told us that some 20,000 or 25,000 people would try to get into a dance, I suppose you would have been just like me. You would have laughed and said they were crazy.” The “failure” of the Moondog Coronation Ball was actually its success. Who could have known?
On October 20, 1944, in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, workers at the East Ohio Gas Company spotted a white vapor leaking from the large natural gas tank at the company plant near Lake Erie. It was 2:30 pm on that Friday afternoon, and a leak is never a good thing, but this one would prove to be disastrous. The circular tank had a diameter of 57 feet and could hold 90 million cubic feet of the highly flammable gas. Ten minutes later, a massive and violent explosion rocked the entire area. Flames went as high as 2,500 feet in the air. Everything in a half-mile vicinity of the explosion was completely destroyed. In the ensuing explosion, a smaller tank also exploded. The out-of-control fire that followed the explosion necessitated the evacuation of 10,000 people from the surrounding area.
Originally built in 1902, the East Ohio Gas Company plant, spanned from East 55th to East 63rd Streets taking up a full ten acres. It provided natural gas to most of Cleveland, including many businesses in the neighborhood in which it was located. By 1940, part of the plant was converted to a liquefaction, storage, and regasification facility, which was one of the most modern gas plants in the country, safely storing large quantities of liquefied gas in four separate holding tanks. These days, we would not have these types of volatile substances stored in a residential area, but back then, before transportation became much more affordable, laborers in those early industrial cities had to be close to their places of employment. A gas storage facility was just one among many industrial operations that were located in a typical working-class neighborhood of that era. However, because the plant was modernized and had many safety features, people living in the area felt they had no reason to fear. That is, until a fateful day in October when “fire fell from the sky.”
The call went out to every firefighting unit in the Cleveland area. It took all of the city’s firefighters to bring the horrific industrial fire under control. In the end, the fire killed 130 people, destroyed two entire factories, 79 homes in the surrounding area and more than 200 vehicles. The total bill for damages exceeded $10 million. When the fire was out, rescue workers found that of the 130 people, killed by the blast, nearly half of the bodies were so badly burned that they could not be identified and in fact, 21 of them were never identified. Two hundred and fifteen people were injured and required hospitalization. The cause of the explosion had to do with the contraction of the metal tanks. The gas was stored at temperatures below negative 250 degrees and 
the resulting contraction of the metal had caused a steel plate to rupture. The East Ohio Gas Explosion has since been calculated to be equal to a 2.43 kiloton TNT explosion or 1/6 of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb. In the aftermath of the fire, everyone knew that changes had to be made to protect laborers, and the people in the neighborhoods. Newer and far safer techniques for storing gas and building tanks were developed in the wake of this disaster.
