May 18: On This Day in World History … briefly
Prior to May 18, Kehoe had loaded the back seat of his truck with metal debris capable of producing shrapnel during an explosion. He also bought a new set of tyres for his truck to avoid breaking down while transporting the explosives.
1927: Bath School massacre: ‘murderous revenge’ plot kills 36 schoolchildren and two teachers
The Bath School massacre, was a series of violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe on May 18, 1927, in Bath Township, Michigan. The attacks killed 38 elementary schoolchildren and six adults and also injured at least 58 other people. Prior to his timed explosives going off at the school building, Kehoe had killed his wife and firebombed his farm.
Andrew Kehoe, 55-year-old school board treasurer, was angered by increased taxes and his defeat in the Spring 1926 election for township clerk. He was thought to have planned his ‘murderous revenge’ after the public defeat. He had a reputation for being difficult and had also been notified that his mortgage was going to be foreclosed upon in June 1926. For much of the next year, a neighbour noticed that he had stopped working on his farm and thought that he might be planning suicide. During that period, Kehoe purchased explosives and discreetly planted them on his property and under the school.
Kehoe murdered his wife Nellie sometime between May 16 and the morning of May 18, 1927, after she had just been discharged from hospital with an undefined illness. He then detonated various incendiary devices on his homestead on the morning of May 18 at about 8.45am, causing the house and other farm buildings to be destroyed by the explosives’ blasts and subsequent fires. Almost simultaneously, an explosion devastated the north wing of the Bath Consolidated School building killing 36 schoolchildren and two teachers. Kehoe had used a timed detonator to detonate hundreds of pounds of dynamite and incendiary pyrotol, which he had secretly planted inside the school over the course of many months.
As rescuers began working at the school, Kehoe drove up, stopped and used a rifle to detonate dynamite inside his shrapnel-filled truck, killing himself, the school superintendent and several others nearby, as well as injuring more bystanders.
During rescue efforts at the school, searchers discovered an additional 500 pounds (230kg) of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol connected to a timing device set to detonate at the same time as the first explosions; the material was hidden throughout the basement of the south wing. Kehoe had apparently intended to blow up and destroy the entire school.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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