The 1993 Bombing of the World Trade Center

The 1993 Bombing of the World Trade Center

By: Garrett Moores

           When this project was first announced I wanted to research the September 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center. However I was not able to perform my project on this subject because of restrictions given by my instructor. This made be sad because I have always had so much interest in this particular devastating domestic attack on the United States. But I was not going to give up on the subject of terrorist attacks against the United States. As I was searching the Internet I stumbled across the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and I was immediately excited because it would allow me to learn about the lead up to the 9/11 attacks and also learn about another devastating day in American history that is often over looked.

Time Magazine

           Before I began learning about the attack I wanted to learn about the World Trade Center itself.  I found that the World Trade Center is not just the twin tower. It actually consisted of seven building all on one big piece of land. The twin towers are 1,368 and 1,362 feet tall and were the tallest building in the world for about a year until Sears Tower was built. The towers were designed by Minoru Yamasaki and Emery Roth and sons. Construction began on August 5th, 1966 and was completed in 1973. This website help me find out more about the twin towers and the rest of the World Trade Center. It was extremely helpful; it provided me with generic information about the Trade Center. 

Twin Towers

          As I was looking for the main information about who, what, when, where, why for the attack I found this site that had all of the basic information of the attack on it. I found The attack took place at 12:06 pm Eastern time on February 26, 1993. The bomb came from a van parked in the parking garage of the World Trade Center. It was a 1,200 pound bomb meant to bring down both twin towers to the ground. Luckily the tower remained standing, but a 60 foot wide crater was left underneath the World Trade Center. Even though the towers did not fall the blast killed six people and injured more than a thousand more. The attack must have been incredibly scary for the people inside the building who were evacuated all afternoon.

After math of the blast.

          After finding finding out about the attack itself I wanted to find out who was responsible for the bombing. The site used above helped me uncover some information but I wanted to find out more about the investigation that proceeded. So I turned to the FBI's official website where I found good information on the investigation and how they brought down these terrorist. After the blast the FBI sent in a team of investigators to inspect the crime scene. They found an identification number to a van that had been reported stolen days before. The FBI brought one suspect into custody when he attempted to retrieve his four hundred dollar deposit on the rented van. Mastermind of the attack, Ramzi Yousef, was not caught until February 1995 in Pakistan. Yousef admitted to being the leader of the attack and even confessed to lighting the fuse, but his real intent was not to just leave a hole in the ground. He wanted to bring down one of the towers and let the debris from that tower destroy the second tower. Six out of the seven suspected terrorist were caught, tried, and sentenced to life in prison. The only suspect that was not caught was Abdul Yasin, he remains on the run to this day.  

Ramzi Yousef

          I wanted to know what the people's immediate reaction to the bombing was so I looked for newspapers to tell of the first thoughts of America were. The New York Times seemed like a great place to start and sure enough I found this article. In the after math of the bombing the police had many people call in admitting to the crime. I think they must have been crazy or were just trying to be funny because the real culprits did not call in. The rest of the city was put on bomb threat because of the bombing. The Empire State building and other buildings were evacuated a few hours after the bomb was detonated. It was very difficult to evacuate the twin towers because the communications for the police department had been disconnected because of the blast.

First responders try to rescue as many as they can.

        The attack on the World Trade Center is one of the most devastating attacks in our history. The fact that it was on domestic soil and in such a public and metropolitan area makes it even more scary to think that someone would want to kill innocent souls. Even though the attack was not "successful" the bomb still killed six people which is six too many. This tragic day was shocking and destructive and will live on in American heart's forever. But it will always be over shadowed by Al- Queda finishing the job on September 11th, 2001. When two commercial airplanes hit the building and killed more than 3,000 people.

After math of 9/11

research pre stuff

These are the directions

This the contract

The Great War’s Music

The topic that was chosen out of the hat for me was music in the World War I era, and how the war affected popular music in the United States. This topic was a bit challenging for me. I found myself having to do research in a completely different way. There wasn’t one website or one book that gave me all the information I needed. And because this was more of an analytical topic it required me to think in a different way as well. My last project on Francis Ouimet was a historical event, an event that was written about and talked about for a very long time and is still something people talk about today. So naturally it was relatively easy to find the research I needed to form my paper. This time around my topic of music is not an event, it’s an emotion and a movement felt by the American public. Therefore it required me to dig a little deeper and put a lot more effort into this project.

            Propaganda in music has been used by governments to influence the emotions of people for a long time. And musicians wrote pro-war songs to inspire patriotism in the American people. Music could have been one of the major factors to why America won the First World War. Without the lyrics from some of these songwriters Americans would not have enlisted, bought bonds, and some might not have even cared about the war. This website is where I learned a lot about the use of music as propaganda. It talks about how dating all the was back to the 18^th century the British government hired a well-known artiest of that time, Charles Dibdin, to write and produce music that would continue the British people’s ill feelings of France. This website was truly a godsend, it helped me thoroughly in my research giving the platform to dive into more specific musicians and songs.

Music was used as propaganda 

            My journey from my previous source lead me to one of the most famous songs of the era and to these two sources gave me great insight into what I was looking for. George Cohan was a star from birth, he and his family where touring performers when George was a child. Young George also played a part in a play of his own where he stared in the main role. He went on to perform on Broadway and became a famous producer. When congress declared war on April 6, 1917 George Cohan had seen the headlines of the newspapers and began humming a tune. He was already a well regarded actor, singer, and producer but he was about to discover one of the biggest hit songs of the day. “Over There” was George’s masterpiece, it was extremely popular and sold over two million copies! George was also awarded the Congressional Metal of Honor for the writing of his song. George’s “song ’Over There’ is about the ‘Yanks’ (i.e. Americans) going ‘over there’ (i.e. across the Atlantic) to help fight the ‘Huns’ (i.e. the Germans) during World War I.” World War One was the driving inspiration behind this song, because without the war this song makes no sense and is totally irrelevant. Cohan got the inspiration from the war to write this song and this song inspired people to support the war. This song is a great example of how popular music can sway someone into thinking a certain way.

"Over There"

Another popular artiest during the war was Ivor Novello. He is most well known for his song “Keep the Home Fires Burning” a pro- war song that gave families of soldiers fighting overseas optimism and reassurance that the war was worth their son’s sacrifice. “Keep the Home Fires Burning, /
While your hearts are yearning, 
/Though your lads are far away
/They dream of home. 
/There's a silver lining
/Through the dark clouds shining, /
Turn the dark cloud inside out
/'Til the boys come home.” The chorus of the song instructs people not to be worried and be joyfully that our soldiers overseas are fighting for democracy. Even though that is not specifically said in the lyrics, that is the underlying message of the song. The source I used for this information helped me with the basics of this song, like the lyrics and who is was made by. It also helped me by showing me that not all songs were trying to recruit men to join the army but they were also for making sure mothers and father were comfortable in letting their kids go off to fight by telling them it was an honorable thing to do.

"Keep the Home Fires Burning"

Soldier song leaders were people recruited to sing pro-war songs to the people. They would travel all around singing at boxing matches and whoever else was willing to listen. Their goal was the same as any other musician of the day, and that was to encourage the war via music. The only difference between the soldier song leaders and the mainstream artiest was that the song leaders didn’t even have to be good at singing they just had to be willing to sing. As I was looking at this newspaper I was fascinated that they would take anyone, in the paper it says: “He doesn’t need to know anything about music, in the generally accepted meaning of musical knowledge.” The fact that some people were brave enough to come out and sing in front people with little to no musical experience at all says a lot about how passionate they were bout the war.

The Great War

I found this topic to be a new challenge for me. It really made me come out of my comfort zone as a researcher. Even though at first I was a bit apprehensive about this research topic I ended up finding out some really cool information about popular music back then. It got me thinking about today’s popular music and how it affects me and my views of the world and its conflicts. As I was thinking about the music on my IPod I realized that a lot of country music has a pro-war message. In the song “Made in America” by Toby Keith, the lyrics talk about how Americans should use and buy American made products as opposed to foreign made products. Toby has the same effect on Americans today as George Cohan had in 1917. It’s amazing how even after almost hundred years the culture behind musical influence can be so similar.

Toby Keith's "Made in America" album cover 

Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac was a famous poet during The Great War. He was enrolled in art school when he was asked to join the British Army. At first he hated the idea
of war. But after hearing that his mother would receive a severance check he felt better about the situation. His passion for writing poetry carried over into his days as a solider in the trenches. He wrote many poems inspired by the harsh conditions of war and the trench life. Isaac was killed in action on April 1st 1918.

research sources

http://www.loc.gov/rr/news/topics/greatfleet.html#top
http://www.greatwhitefleet.info/GWF-The_Battleships.html

Great white fleet research

Set of December 16th 1907 and came back February 22nd 1909. Consisted of 14,000 sailor and made twenty port stops on six continents.