The British Pavilion at the New York World's Fair
A little-known terrorist attack on American soil occurs this day -- a time bomb planted in the British Pavilion at the New York World's Fair of 1939-40. After it was carried to a remote area, two bomb squad detectives, Joe Lynch and Freddy Socha, tried to defuse it. The bomb went off in their faces, killing them instantly. It was a tragedy, but it could have been worse. Police Commissioner Lewis Valentine noted that it was only a miracle that hundreds of fairgoers weren't killed.
New York was suffering from bomb fever in those before World War II. On Sept. 11, 1938, two huge explosions rocked the fur district along West 29th Street. On June 20, years 1940, a pair of time bombs ripped open office buildings on Battery Place and East 12th Street. Bomb threats reached a peak of nearly 400 every week. We like to think of those days as innocent, softened by the selective memory of nostalgia, but prewar New York City was perhaps as dangerous then as it is today when it comes to acts of terrorism.