February time machine

Introduction

Today the Arizona Daily Star offers a look back at some front pages that appeared in Februarys throughout the newspaper’s history. Some had big national or international news on the cover. Sometimes the big news was local.

Arizona became a state in February. John Glenn orbited the Earth, Tucson had its first Fiesta de los Vaqueros, astronauts left the space shuttle untethered, there was a spy swap between the United States and the Soviet Union and the World Trade Center was hit by a car bomb.

A single newspaper page earlier in the 20th century was much wider than they are today. To be able to print the entire page, we have been forced to shrink them so that they are too small for many to read. The center of this section shows a page that is much closer to the original size. On other pages where the reproduction is smaller, we've reprinted at least part of the stories we've highlighted.

Note that the dates here are the dates of the front pages. The news often happened a day or more earlier.

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Feb. 14, 1912: Arizona becomes a state

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"TO MY VALENTINE" ─ STATEHOOD

DRINK A TOAST TO THE STATE FAIREST OF ALL ─ ARIZONA

This Is the Day We Celebrate. Statehood Comes on Golden Anniversary of Forming of Territory. Governor-elect at Capital

MOVING PICTURES OF SIGNING ORDER

Washington Also Prepares Unusual Feature for Issuing of Proclamation. Bisbee Plans Holiday. Grand Ball Ready

Associated Press Reports.

PHOENIX, Ariz., Feb. 13. ─ The Admission Day committee passed a resolution this evening asking the Associated Press to invite the world to drink a toast to the admission of Arizona, on Wednesday evening at 8 o'clock, Mountain time.

Moving Pictures.

WASHINGTON, D. C., Feb. 13. ─ For the first time in the history of the White House, moving pictures of an event of national importance will be taken tomorrow when President Taft signs the proclamation admitting Arizona to statehood.

Pictures will be taken by an employe of the treasury department and presented to the president.

Another set may be made as part of the official records.

Bisbee Booms.

BISBEE, Ariz., Feb. 13. ─ Upon the announcement of the signing of the statehood proclamation, tomorrow, by President Taft, 48 sticks of dynamite will be exploded in the pocket of the Copper Queen mountain.

The day has been declared a holiday and will be given over to speechmaking and sports.

Phoenix Is Ready.

PHOENIX, Ariz., Feb. 13. ─ All is in readiness for the inauguration of Arizona's first governor at noon tomorrow. Governor-elect Hunt, his wife, and daughter, Virginia, arrived here today. At noon tomorrow Hunt will walk to the capitol and take the oath, administered by Chief Justice Edward Kent.

Contrary to his wishes, the committee arranged for a big military and civic parade in the afternoon, and the firing of a salute of 48 guns at 2 o'clock.

In the evening a reception and banquet will be tendered at a hotel, after which the inaugural ball will be held in the streets.

Everybody in Arizona is invited to attend the ball.

Feb. 6, 1917, front page: Immigration Act passed

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CONGRESS TURNS BACK ON JAPS, PASSING IMMIGRATION BILL OVER PRESIDENT'S VETO

(By Associated Press)

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5. ─ Congress has over-ridden a veto by President Wilson for the first time and enacted into law the immigration bill with its long-fought literacy test provision. The senate voted late today 62 to 19 to pass the measure, notwithstanding the veto and in spite of eleventh hour information that Japan again had protested against the language of the Asiatic exclusion section.

The house overturned the veto last week by a vote of 287 to 106, so the senate's action ends the contest of 20 years standing in which three presidents have repudiated similar bills passed by congress.

The international situation was brought into the closing debate in the senate, Senator Reed calling attention to the Japanese objection and pleading that nothing be done at this time to disturb or impair the country's relations with a friendly nation. Senator Smith, of South Carolina, chairman of the immigration committee, answered with a declaration that the present state of international affairs emphasized the necessity for a pure-homogeneous people such as the bill was intended to protect.

"IF CAP FITS LET JAPS WEAR IT"

Senator Reed communicated information from the state department to the effect that the Japanese embassy had called attention to language in the bill providing that no aliens "now in any way" excluded from the country would in the future be permitted to enter the United States. He said the criticism was based on their belief that this language wrote into law the Root-Takahira gentlemen's passport agreement against the entry of Japanese laborers.

Senator Lodge of Massachusetts, ranking Republican member of the foreign relations committee explained the progress of the provisions to which Japanese objection has been voiced in the various stages of such legislation.

Note: This immigration law included a literacy clause. It barred all immigrants over the age of 16 who were illiterate or could not read 30-40 words of their own language from an ordinary text. Another section, called the "Asiatic barred zone," banned immigrants from much of Asia. There were provisions to allow temporary laborers including agricultural workers from Mexico.

Feb. 21, 1925, front page: First Tucson rodeo

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VISITORS CROWD HOTELS FOR OPENING OF RODEO

Three Day Festival to Begin With Parade of Cowboys and Citizens

Indians in Native Regalia and Mounted Police to Add Color to Pageant Preceding La Fiesta de Los Vaqueros.

With a crash of martial music from two military bands, the tramp of horses' feet and the colorful stream of cowboys, cowgirls and Indians, the Fiesta de los Vaqueros, Tucson's first annual rodeo will open this morning when the parade starts on West Congress street at 10:30 o'clock.

Contestants and visitors from all parts of the country are filling the hotels and rooming houses of the city to capacity, and more cars are arriving each hour, bringing people who are either taking part, or wishing to see the rodeo at Santa Catalina field.

Under the charge of the parade committee, with Cleon Sellers, president of the Tucson Rotary club as chairman, the parade will be formed on west Congress street near the E. P. & S. W. station in the following order:

Section 1

Paul Cloke in charge.

Will form on North Main street, facing West Congress street, line up will be as follows:

1. Major Nuestatter.

2. Two mounted riders carrying American flags.

3. 25th U. S. Infantry band.

4. Marshall, Walter Bailey.

5. Chief of Police Dyer.

6. Mounted Police.

7. Mounted Polo players.

8. Mounted Girl riders from University.

All mounted riders are asked to ride two abreast, and maintain a distance of about five horse lengths in rear of preceding rider.

Section 2

C. J. Sellers in charge.

Will form on West Congress street west of Main street.

1. 10th Cavalry band.

2. Mounted Cowboys, Cowgirls, Trick ropers and Clowns.

3. Mounted Navajo Indians.

4. Mounted Indians.

All mounted riders are asked to ride two abreast, and maintain a distance of about five horse lengths in rear of preceding rider.

Section 3

Dr. Victor Gore in charge.

Will form in front of the El Paso and Southwestern passenger station facing West Congress street. The stage coach will face directly on West Congress, and others will fall in behind coach. Five minutes before parade starts the stage coach and all others forming section 3 will close up on section 2. In the event that Section 2 extends beyond the West entrance of Southwestern grounds, section 3 will hold their places until section 2 clears this intersection. All riders will ride two abreast same distance apart as all other. In case there are unmounted contestants they will walk two abreast about 20 feet apart.

Section 4

Edward Vander Vries in charge.

All automobiles will form in front of the El Paso and Southwestern freight depot facing Granada street. After parade start, section 4 will fall in behind section 3, that is after section clears Granada street.

A safe distance should be maintained between motor cars, and distance will be left to those in charge of motor section as they are better informed as to distance required.

Many Prizes Offered

Following the street parade, the judges , who with the Board of Governors of the Polo Association and Mayor John E. White, will review the spectacle from a reviewing stand in front of the Consolidated National bank, where the judges will make the choice of winners of the cash and merchandise prizes which have been put up for the entrants of the parade.

Feb. 15, 1929, front page: St. Valentine's Day massacre

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Gang War Breaks Out Again As Mob Slays Trapped Men

Wholesale Execution Brings Death To Seven Unarmed Men In Chicago Where Moran Gang Met; Police Commissioner Says "War, Without Mercy"

By H. W. Magee

CHICAGO, Feb. 14. ─ (AP) ─ Chicago gangsters, posing as policemen, invaded the Northside stronghold of the George "Bugs" Moran gang, lines up seven helpless, unarmed victims with their faces to a white brick wall and mowed them down with automatic pistols and machine guns.

The wholesale execution was carried out at 10:30 o'clock this morning, with all the precision of an army firing squad. It was an innovation in Chicago gang history which brought the total gang victims to more than 135 in the past few years. Five men drove up to Moran's headquarters in a garage at 2122 North Clark street after putting through a telephone call inquiring whether certain members of the gang were there.

They rushed into the garage with drawn pistols and machine guns, informing the seven men they were police officers. Some of them flashed stars and others wore parts of police uniforms. Without ado they herded the victims to a courtyard in the rear.

Men Are Trapped

Overhead gleamed a powerful electric light to make the work of the firing squad easier. Whether the victims realized they had been trapped by a clever ruse will never be known. There was a word from the leader, and the clatter of machine guns and pistols and the massacre was completed.

A few minutes after, the firing squad, still carrying the pistols and machine guns, sauntered out, climbed into an automobile, stowed the weapons in the rear and drove away. Apparently few persons heard the firing.

A woman told a policeman that some one had been hurt in the garage and he entered to verify this prosaic report.

Six victims he found lying where they fell, feet to the wall, their faces turned to the incandescent light overhead. A seventh victim mortally wounded, was found in another room. He lived for two hours but stoically maintained the gangland code of silence.

The garage conducted as a blind for the Northside liquor running syndicate, resembled a shambles. Blood spattered the walls, scores of bullet holes pockmarked the bricks. The victims killed by their merciless executioners without having a chance at escape, sprawled grotesquely on the floor, the hats of some of them still at the same cocky angle affected by gangsters and hoodlums.

Police quickly determined the main facts in the wholesale killing. Some of the victims were identified immediately. Two were Peter Gusenberg, notorious gunman and gangster, and his brother Frank, both involved in the Dearborn street mail robbery a few years ago. Al Weinshank, underworld roustabout and James Clark, Moran's brother-in-law, were two others. A fifth was John May, garage employe. The other two men were identified variously as Arthur Hayes, Arthur Davis, or Frank Foster, all known as Moran followers.

May be Kidnapped

What happened to Moran no one knew. One report was that the gunmen kidnaped two men after shooting the others. A boy said he saw them march two men to their car, both with hands in the air. Another man said he saw a man with blood streaming from his face enter the car with the gunmen. Whether this was Moran, one of his henchmen or one of the executioners wounded by a ricocheting bullet, no one was certain.

Feb. 21, 1930, front page: Eva Dugan hangs

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EVA DUGAN DIES IN PRISON

WOMAN'S DEATH FINAL CHAPTER IN MATHIS CASE

Slayer of Tucson Recluse Calm in Last Hours At Penitentiary

STATE PRISON, FLORENCE, Ariz., Feb. 21.—Mrs. Eva Dugan, convicted slayer of A. J. Mathis, Tucson rancher, paid the extreme penalty on the gallows this morning. She was pronounced dead at 5:02 o'clock.

Mrs. Dugan walked to the gallows unaided, asked if she had anything to say, she remained silent and someone said for her "She has nothing to say." She mounted the scaffold at 5:01 and the trap was sprung immediately. As it fell, her head remained above the trap, while her body, completely severed, dropped below into a pool of blood. Two minutes later the room which had contained 60 witnesses was empty.

Shortly before the execution, searchers found three razor blades in Mrs. Dugan's waist and announced that a half hour earlier they had found a bottle of poison in her cell.

Mrs. Dugan will be buried in the little prison graveyard southeast of the tall penitentiary walls.

At 4 o'clock this morning the twelve reporters present were taken to Mrs. Dugan's cell. They found her outwardly calm. She shook hands with each of them and seemed to bear no resentment toward any. Her handshake was firm with no sign of a tremble, but there was noticeable a slight quaver in her voice.

She avoided making direct answers to any questions put to her, but repeated that she would walk to the gallows without assistance provided some one went with her. She displayed no emotion whatever, appearing to be unconcerned, saying goodbyes to the ones with whom she was acquainted in the same way she would say it if she were going away on a short journey.

EVA DUGAN CALM IN FINAL HOURS

Plays Cards with Companions; Caresses Letter From Her Daughter

STATE PRISON, FLORENCE, Ariz., Feb. 21.—(AP)—Mrs. Eva Dugan — sentenced to pay with her life on the gallows for the murder of A. J. Mathis within a few hours — was the calmest person in the prison this morning.

She sat at a card table playing whist with two women friends and a woman prisoner — outside the death watch paced back and forth — at her elbow was a telegram from her daughter, Mrs. Cecil Loveless. The daughter told her condemned mother she was praying for her. Occasionally Mrs. Dugan's hand would caress this farewell message of love and cheer.

Shortly before midnight, Eva asked that she and her "guests" be served with orangeade. It was ordered and several minutes had passed without the drink being served, she called the guard and told him, "please bring me and my guests the orangeade. I want it now, tomorrow will be too late."

When told that a friend had sent her some cut flowers, she said, "please, I don't want that. I like to see flowers growing, but cut flowers have always been my jinx. Don't bring them here."

In the whist game she was lucky and played as if her own life depended upon the outcome.

"Lucky" she said, "when it makes no difference."

Bad Girls of Arizona: Eva Dugan $0.99 Kindle Nook Free for Star subscribers

Feb. 16, 1961, front page: U.S. Figure skating team killed in plane crash

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73 Persons Killed As Belgian Airlines Plane Crashes

18 Skaters From U.S. Lose Lives

Boeing Jet Tragedy Occurs Near Brussels

© 1961 New York Times News Service

BRUSSELS, Feb. 15 ─ A Sabena Airline Boeing 707 jet crashed near the Brussels airport Wednesday, killing 73 persons, including 18 members of the American Figure skating team.

The plane, en route from New York, plunged to earth after it had twice circled the airport. The dead included the 61 passengers, the crew of eleven, and a farmer in the field where the plane fell. The passengers included 49 Americans, one Swiss, one Frenchman, One German, a Canadian, a Nicaraguan and seven Belgians.

The American figure skating team was en route to a world championship meet in Prague. Its members included Mrs. Maribel Vinson Owen, 49 years old, of Winchester, Mass., and her two daughters. Mrs. Owen was the United States figure skating champion nine times. On the current trip she was the coach for her daughters.

It was the worst air disaster ever suffered by Sabena and the first time that any passengers had been killed in a Boeing 707 accident. The last serious accident for Sabena occurred May 18, 1958, when a DC7C crashed at Casablanca, killing 56 passengers and nine crew members.

The four-engined jet came in sight of the skyscraper tower of Brussels National Airport Wednesday morning shortly before 10 a.m. in a cloudless sky. It had apparently had an uneventful flight from New York, where it left at 7:30 p.m. New York time Tuesday night. It would have landed at once except that another plane was moving along the runway to take off, according to an airport official.

Something happened aboard the plane in the next few minutes. Persons in the little farming hamlet of Berg, northeast of Brussels, saw the airliner turning overhead at about 600 feet altitude. It was also being watched by officials at the airport control tower using field glasses.

"At 10:05 a.m. it fell like a bomb," one airport official said later. Men and women in Berg gave similar accounts. A farmer named Verhoeven said, "It fell like a stone."

Wednesday night William de Swarte, director general of Sabena, expressed the opinion that "something must have gone wrong with the controls of the plane." He said that the only alternative to this explanation could be that the two experienced pilots had suddenly lost consciousness at the same time, which he considered impossible.

Feb. 11, 1962, front page: Spy swap with Soviet Union

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Russ Free U2 Pilot Powers In 'Swap' For Top Spy Abel

Dramatic Trade Takes Place On Bridge In Berlin

Flier En Route To Reunion With Family And Secrecy-Shrouded Official Reception

By Douglas B. Cornell

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 (AP) ─ American U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers walked to freedom in the center of a Berlin bridge Saturday in a drama-packed trade for Soviet master spy Rudolf Abel.

Russia contended it was a gesture of friendship. The United States is still looking for demonstrations of friendship of greater proportions or significance.

Powers walked to freedom in a fur cap and dark overcoat, across a white line where Communist East Germany stops and West Berlin begins.

The 32-year-old flier had spent 21 months in a Soviet prison after pleading guilty to spying from his high-flying photo plane that was downed in Russian territory on May 1, 1960.

Freed far sooner than he apparently had dared hope, Powers quickly was whisked away from the Berlin bridge in a convoy of cars. He was rushed to a plane and soon was on the way home by air, to a reception to be shrouded in secrecy and uncertain official warmth.

Abel disappeared behind the Iron Curtain of Communism. He had been serving a 30-year sentence as a spy convicted of stealing military and nuclear secrets from this country and slipping them to the Kremlin.

One other person was involved in what was a two-for-one swap. The United States got back 28-year-old Frederic L. Pryor, who was studying in West Berlin, entered East Berlin last August and vanished. Word seeped into the West weeks later that he, too, was in prison, accused of espionage.

Pryor was released at a different spot on the Berlin border, Checkpoint Charlie. Not until he was free, and reunited with his waiting parents, did the Powers-Abel exchange go through, 12 miles away.

It was 8:52 a.m. Berlin time when it happened. That was 2:52 a.m. in Washington.

Within five minutes, word of the swap reached President Kennedy.

The Chief Executive had slipped up to the living quarters in the White House an hour before to await the flash from Berlin. Until then, he had been attending a gay, black tie, White House dinner dance.

Newsmen routed out of bed by Press Secretary Pierre Salinger got the word of the exchange that had taken place on Berlin's Glienicker bridge.

Salinger announced that Powers and Pryor had been turned over to U.S. authorities and that Kennedy had commuted Abel's sentence. That action was effective at the moment of Powers' release.

A formal statement said Powers soon would be on his way to the United States and that:

"He will have an opportunity to meet privately with his family and will be interviewed by appropriate United States government officials."

The government notified Powers' wife, at Milledgeville, Ga., and his parents at Norton, Va.

Feb. 21, 1962, front page: John Glenn goes into orbit

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Ride Is Greatest Since Paul Revere's

U.S. Gets Needed Boost In Morale

By James Reston

© 1962 New York Times News Service

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Feb. 20 ─ When John Glenn came in from his morning's ride Tuesday, the Post Office Department in Washington announced that it was going to print a commemorative four-cent stamp in his honor, but the chances are that America would have remembered the event anyway.

For it was the greatest American ride since Paul Revere, who didn't get a stamp till much later, and it was pure American from start to finish: part Hollywood spectacular, part circus, part country fair ─ three times around the world in living color and news from heaven all the way.

They say that this sort of thing has been done somewhere before, but not like this. Gagarin and Titov of the Soviet Union went into orbit by themselves, but Glenn made a party of it and took the whole country along for the ride.

America sort of needed an outing and an airing like this. For the first time in its history, it had lately begun to second-guess itself. In fact, ever since Gagarin's first space flight the skeptics and doubters, the witch-smellers and head-shrinkers, the debunkers and scoffers had confused and frustrated the country.

This in turn produced a lot of big splashy generalizations that somehow we had lost our way and had to find wholly new policies to deal with our problems at home and abroad.

Even the American character, it was said, had changed. The old faiths and the old silent types with their plain wives and their beer and baseball were out of fashion, and then along came these matter-of-fact, uncomplicated, almost old-fashioned characters who paid more attention to outer space than to inner tensions and made the country begin to think again.

This surely is what John Glenn did Tuesday. There was nothing fancy about him; just that flat middle-western voice giving the facts, and saying he felt "real fine," and the view was "tremendous" and the coast of Africa was coming up on the left, and boy the American shoreline sure looked wonderful.

This was the kind of talk you might hear from the nice man next door, which is about what most of these astronauts have turned out to be, even after they hit Harry Luce's jackpot. And the interesting thing about this is that the space project is full of this kind of American.

It is not only John Glenn from New Concord, Ohio, and Alan Shepard from East Derry, N.H., and Virgil Grissom from Mitchell, Ind., who made this orbital flight possible. It was a team operation from defense and NASA, from the McDonnell Aircraft Corp. and General Dynamics, from Bell Laboratories and a lot of other places, and it is remarkable how similar many of the leading characters seem to be.

This team of men in the plate-glass night club atmosphere of Cape Canaveral is one of the most interesting aspects of this whole operation. The fancy, hard-drinking America is all around the base. For days, it has been a jungle of inflammable blondes and Billy Minsky strip-teasers.

It was largely this fringe aspect of Canaveral, where Glenn and the other astronauts have to live, that gave Tuesday's atmosphere such an air of carnival and hippodrome before the bird went aloft.

Maybe there is some symbolism here, however. For while this chromium-plated America exists, so does the other America of moderate, monogamous types. What Glenn did was simply to lift the nation above all the glitter and in so doing he raised its sights and its confidence.

Maybe he never gave it a thought, but it's likely to be remembered for a while anyway, with or without that commemorative stamp.

Feb. 22, 1965, front page: Malcolm X is killed

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Malcolm X Killed At New York Rally

Assassin Rises From Audience

NEW YORK, Feb. 21. (AP) ─ Gunfire cut down the Negro extremist Malcolm X as he rose to address a rally Sunday in an upper Manhattan ballroom.

Police charged a 22-year-old Negro, Thomas Hagan, with firing the fatal shots. He was charged with homicide.

Hagan, shot in the leg in the melee that followed the assassination, was held in the prison ward of Bellevue Hospital.

Police Capt. Paul Glaser said Hagan killed Malcolm with a sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun, and was himself wounded by one of Malcolm 's followers, Reuben Francis.

Francis was charged with illegal possession of a pistol.

Police had said at least five men were believed involved in the assassination, after lurking amid the ranks of 500 of Malcolm's disciples at the rally.

Police blamed the slaying on a feud between Malcolm, 39, and the Black Muslim movement, with which he broke in 1963. The Muslims, however, denied any complicity.

A diversion in the rear of the ballroom drew attention from the stage long enough for the assassinations to race down an aisle and pump bullets into Malcolm's chest from three weapons. He had just begun to address his followers, starting, "Brothers and Sisters . . ."

Malcolm's wife, Betty, 37, was nearby. She screamed, "They're killing him ─ they're killing him."

The killers turned around and raced from the second floor ballroom with a mob shouting at their heels, "Kill them ─ don't let them get away."

Outside the hall, quickly converging police grabbed three Negroes, themselves suffering from gunshot wounds. They were hospitalized under guard for questioning.

'I Live Like A Man Who's Already Dead'

By Theodore Jones

© 1965 New York Times News Service

NEW YORK ─ "I live like a man who’s already dead," Malcolm X declared last Thursday in a two-hour interview in the Harlem office of his Organization for Afro-American Unity.

"I'm a marked man," he said slowly as he fingered his horn-rimmed glasses and leaned toward his visitor to give emphasis to his words, "it doesn't frighten me for myself as long as I felt they would not hurt my family."

Asked about "they," Malcolm smiled. Then shaking his head in mock astonishment, he said, "Those folks down at 116th Street and that man in Chicago."

The references, Malcolm quickly confirmed, were his former associates in the Black Muslim movement and Elijah Muhammad, the organizer and head of the movement. Before he left the movement 18 months ago, Malcolm was the minister of the Black Muslims' Harlem Mosque at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue.

"No one can get out without trouble," Malcolm continued, "and this thing with me will be resolved by death and violence."

Feb. 8, 1984, front page: First untethered space walk

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Untethered astronauts take 'big leap' in space

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) ─ Two American astronauts left the safety of their shuttle yesterday and flew unrestrained for the first time, adding another milestone to man's conquest of space. Said the first man out to the second: "Go enjoy it; have a ball."

First Bruce McCandless, and then Robert Stewart, unhooked their lifelines and slowly rose up and away from the space shuttle Challenger, carried by a $10 million jet-powered backpack to a distance greater than the length of a football field.

"McCandless and his Manned Maneuvering Unit comprise a spacecraft of their own," said Mission Control.

Although they had no sensation of speed, the astronauts were traveling 4.8 miles a second as they zipped over the spinning Earth below. They'll do it again tomorrow.

McCandless, who has spent more than a decade preparing for his historic but brief flight, happily parodied Neil Armstrong's words upon becoming the first man to step on the moon in 1969.

Said McCandless: "That may have been one small step for Neil, but it's a heck of a big leap for me."

Never before in 59 spacewalks ─ 46 American and 13 Soviet ─ had a man ventured out without a lifeline. Yesterday's exercise was a rehearsal for the next shuttle flight when other spacewalkers will try to retrieve an ailing satellite, bring it into the cargo bay for repair and release it to orbit again.

Unfortunately, that procedure won't be possible for the two communications satellites launched in this 10th space shuttle flight. The satellites, launched for Western Union and Indonesia, are in a useless low orbit. They were intended for high orbit and lack fixtures for retrieval.

When the spacewalkers re-entered the Challenger, Mission Control congratulated them on a super job.

"It was a real thrill," said McCandless in an aw-shucks voice. "A real honor to be up there."

Feb. 27, 1993, front page: World Trade Center bombed

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Blast rocks World Trade Center, killing 5

600 are injured in apparent car bombing; thousands in 2 towers flee fires, smoke

By Robert D. McFadden

© 1993 The New York Times

NEW YORK ─ An explosion apparently caused by a car bomb in an underground garage shook the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan with the force of a small earthquake shortly after noon yesterday, collapsing walls and floors, igniting fires and plunging the city's largest building complex into a maelstrom of smoke, darkness and fearful chaos.

Police said the blast killed at least five people and injured at least 600 others. Most suffered smoke inhalation or minor burns, but dozens had cuts, bruises, broken bones or serious burns. Police said about 275 victims were treated at hospitals and the rest by rescue and medical crews at the scene.

(One source told The Associated Press that one group, claiming to represent Croatian militants, called 15 minutes before the blast. A second source, a police officer at the scene who like the first spoke on condition of anonymity, said a "massive bomb" was responsible.)

The explosion trapped hundreds of people in debris or in smoke-filled stairwells of the two towers overhead and forces the evacuation of tens of thousands of workers from a trade center bereft of power for lights and elevators.

"It felt like a big boom," said Lisa Hoffman, who works at the nearby World Financial Center. "The building shook. I looked out the window to see if New Jersey had disappeared."

The blast, which was felt throughout the Wall Street area and a mile away on Ellis and Liberty islands on New York Harbor, also knocked out the police command and operations centers for the towers, which officials said rendered the office complex's evacuation plans useless.