Qualla: Kingsland Explosion https://qualla.com/kingsland-explosion en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:17 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/2/kingsland-explosion-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Kingsland Explosion https://qualla.com/kingsland-explosion Kingsland Explosion: Introduction https://qualla.com/kingsland-explosion/ Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. At the asylum on Snake Hill, nine hundred residents watched the sky light up and believed the world was ending. Dr. James Meehan had a different idea. He rushed to the institution with supplies of ice cream, fruit, and candy, gathered everyone in the lecture hall, and announced that the European War was over -- the explosions they heard were celebratory gunfire. It was January 11, 1917. The war would not end for nearly two more years. But the story he told was kinder than the truth: a few miles away, the Canadian Car and Foundry Company's munitions plant in Kingsland, New Jersey, had just blown itself apart in a chain of explosions so spectacular that office workers in Manhattan pressed against their windows to watch.

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]]> Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/2/kingsland-explosion-wp/dr72-kingsland-explosion-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Kingsland Explosion: Three Million Shells a Month https://qualla.com/kingsland-explosion/ Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Though the United States would not enter World War I until April 1917, American factories were already feeding the war machine. The British naval blockade of Germany meant the Allied powers were the only customers, and the Kingsland plant was among the busiest suppliers. Munition...

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]]> Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/2/kingsland-explosion-wp/dr72-kingsland-explosion-three-million-shells-a-month.mp3 0:06 2 full Kingsland Explosion: The Man at Workbench Thirty https://qualla.com/kingsland-explosion/ Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. The fire started at the workbench of Theodore Wozniak in Building 30. How it began was a matter of fierce dispute for decades. According to one account, a network of German saboteurs operated under Frederick Hinsch, who recruited a German national named Curt Thummel -- working un...

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]]> Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/2/kingsland-explosion-wp/dr72-kingsland-explosion-the-man-at-workbench-thirty.mp3 0:06 3 full Kingsland Explosion: A Broadside from a Battleship https://qualla.com/kingsland-explosion/ Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. The entire plant was destroyed. The spectacle was said to surpass even the Black Tom explosion the previous year, and people across the New York metropolitan area watched the fireballs from office buildings and apartment windows. Two miles of Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Rai...

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]]> Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/2/kingsland-explosion-wp/dr72-kingsland-explosion-a-broadside-from-a-battleship.mp3 0:06 4 full Kingsland Explosion: Ice Cream at the End of the World https://qualla.com/kingsland-explosion/ Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. The institutions on Snake Hill in Secaucus -- an almshouse, a penitentiary, a hospital for contagious diseases, a tuberculosis sanitarium, and a psychiatric hospital -- sat close enough to the blast that residents could see what the warden later described as a massive display of ...

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]]> Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/2/kingsland-explosion-wp/dr72-kingsland-explosion-ice-cream-at-the-end-of-the-world.mp3 0:06 5 full Kingsland Explosion: Fifty Million Dollars of Silence https://qualla.com/kingsland-explosion/ Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. John J. McCloy launched a reparations case against Germany in 1934. The legal battle dragged on for years, entangled with the parallel claims from the Black Tom explosion. Germany never admitted that its agents had anything to do with the Kingsland fire. But between 1953 and 1979...

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]]> Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/2/kingsland-explosion-wp/dr72-kingsland-explosion-fifty-million-dollars-of-silence.mp3 0:06 6 full