May 18, 1927 (Wednesday)
- Bath School bombings: At Bath Township, Michigan, 36 schoolchildren and 5 adults were killed by dynamite charges that had been placed underneath the local school. Andrew Kehoe, who had been treasurer of the township school board, had planted the bombs under the north wing, which housed 110 pupils and instructors, and the south wing, with 150 more. On the morning of the last day of classes, Kehoe set a two-minute timer and drove away, and at 9:43 a.m., the explosives under the north wing detonated. A short circuit in one of the wires prevented the destruction of the south wing. Kehoe, who had murdered his wife earlier and blew up his house and farm, killed himself and three other people half an hour later, detonating a car bomb while sitting in his Ford truck. The bombings make the deadliest act of mass murder at a school in U.S. history.
Read more about this topic: May 1927