Posts tagged Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building

The Death of Peace

36
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in
September 11, 2001, attacks in New York City: V...

What Changed the World

This is the first arti­cle in a series this week on the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

— from the Bha­gavad Gita, as recalled by J. Robert Oppen­heimer upon the det­o­na­tion of the world’s first arti­fi­cial nuclear explosion.

“The release of atom power has changed every­thing except our way of thinking…”

— Albert Ein­stein

“What’s the sense of send­ing $2 mil­lion mis­siles to hit a $10 tent that’s empty?”

— George W. Bush, pri­vate Oval Office meet­ing, Sep­tem­ber 13, 2001

Albert Ein­stein, that great thinker and physi­cist, needs to be para­phrased. Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, changed noth­ing, except our way of think­ing. But the way we view the world, that changed every­thing. (more…)

Something in the Air

0
2 years ago
by dcpetterson in

Branch David­i­ans at Waco

There may be some­thing strange in the spring air. This is the week for disasters.

On April 19, 1993, seventy-​​six peo­ple died after a fifty-​​day siege at the Branch David­ian com­pound in Waco, Texas. One hun­dred sixty-​​eight peo­ple died in a ter­ror­ist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Mur­rah Fed­eral Build­ing in Okla­homa City on April 19, 1995. Four years later, on April 20, 1999, twelve stu­dents and a teacher were killed, and twenty-​​four oth­ers injured, in a shoot­ing spree at Columbine High School in Col­orado. Then, on April 20, 2010, an explo­sion on the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil rig in the Gulf of Mex­ico killed eleven work­ers, injured 17 oth­ers, and released mil­lions of bar­rels of oil into the Gulf.

Alfred R. Mur­rah Building

It may be that any week in his­tory has as many ter­ri­ble events. But four such hor­ri­fy­ing cat­a­stro­phes in less than twenty years, with anniver­saries no more than a day apart, it’s enough to make any his­to­rian take notice. (more…)

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