September 16, 1920: Terrorism On Wall Street

September 16, 1920, 100 years ago: Wall Street is bombed. The explosion kills 38 people, and injures over 400.

Although Mario Buda, an Italian anarchist and an associate of the recently-arrested Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, is now believed to have been the man who dropped off the bomb, this was not figured out until he had escaped back to his native Italy.

Buda continued his anarchist activities until the 1930s, switching sides to help the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini find his former friends. After World War II, he switched back to anarchism, though it's not clear why any side would have trusted him at that point, since any side he was on ended up betrayed and defeated. He died in 1963.

 

To this day, there are still gouges from the shrapnel in the outer wall on the Wall Street side of the House of Morgan, then the headquarters of the company founded by J.P. Morgan, at 23 Wall, across Broad Street from the New York Stock Exchange. The building is mainly empty now, and is basically a monument to the victims of the bombing. However, despite the New York Stock Exchange being literally right across Broad Street, 23 Wall stood in for the Gotham Stock Exchange in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises.