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mahatmakanejeeves

(57,586 posts)
Tue Dec 29, 2020, 06:47 PM Dec 2020

On this day, December 29, 1975, a bomb exploded at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.

Last edited Tue Dec 29, 2020, 08:19 PM - Edit history (2)

1975 LaGuardia Airport bombing

Location: Queens, New York City
Coordinates: 40°46?28?N 73°52?17?W
Date: December 29, 1975; 6:33 pm (local time)
Deaths: 11
Injured: 74
Perpetrators: Unidentified
Motive: Unknown

On December 29, 1975, a bomb was detonated near the TWA baggage reclaim terminal at LaGuardia Airport, New York City. The blast killed 11 people and seriously injured 74. The perpetrators were never identified. The attack occurred during a four-year period of heightened terrorist attacks within the United States. 1975 was especially volatile, with bombings in New York City and Washington D.C. early that year and two assassination attempts on US President Gerald Ford.

The LaGuardia Airport bomb, at the time, was the single most deadly attack by a non-state actor to occur on American soil since the Bath School bombings, which killed 44 people in 1927. It was the deadliest attack in New York City since the Wall Street bombing of 1920, which killed 38, until the September 11 attacks in 2001.

{snip}

On December 29, 1975, a massive bomb, equivalent to 25 sticks of dynamite, exploded in the baggage-claim area of LaGuardia Airport, killing 11 & injuring 75. The bombing officially remains unsolved.

Until the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the 1975 LaGuardia Airport bombing was the deadliest attack in New York City since the Wall Street bombing of 1920, which killed 38


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On this day, December 29, 1975, a bomb exploded at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Dec 2020 OP
Intersting... regnaD kciN Dec 2020 #1

regnaD kciN

(26,045 posts)
1. Intersting...
Tue Dec 29, 2020, 07:34 PM
Dec 2020

Last edited Tue Dec 29, 2020, 08:29 PM - Edit history (1)

I remember that bombing well. I was back home from college on Christmas break, and my father and I had gone into Boston to see a play or film that day. My mother had a cold/flu, and decided not to join us. When we got home, she was listening to the radio and told us about it. With exquisitely-bad timing, that night PBS broadcast an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus that featured an unusually-large number of explosions; none of us found it very amusing.

It's interesting to me that they never determined who was responsible, and that it may have been a Yugoslav "false flag" operation. At the time, everyone just "knew" it was P.L.O. terrorists, and the later clarifications from the investigation were never reported prominently enough for people to question that conclusion, which probably says much about anti-Palestinian prejudices in the U.S. at the time.

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