selected
World War I or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. Main areas of conflict included Europe and the Middle East, as well as parts of Africa and the Asia-Pacific. There were important developments in weaponry including tanks, aircraft, artillery, machine guns, and chemical weapons. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, it resulted in an estimated 30 million military casualties, plus another 8 million civilian deaths from war-related causes and genocide. The movement of large numbers of people was a major factor in the deadly Spanish flu pandemic.
The Black Tom explosion was an act of arson by field agents of the Office of Naval Intelligence of the German Empire, to destroy U.S.-made munitions that were about to be shipped to the Allies during World War I. The explosions occurred on July 30, 1916, in New York Harbor, killing at least 7 people and wounding hundreds more. It also caused damage of military goods worth some $20,000,000. This incident, which happened prior to U.S. entry into World War I, also damaged the Statue of Liberty. It is one of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions in history.
New York Harbor is a bay that covers all of the Upper Bay. It is at the mouth of the Hudson River near the East River tidal estuary on the East Coast of the United States.
The Allies or the Entente was an international military coalition of countries led by the French Republic, the United Kingdom, the Russian Empire, the United States, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Empire of Japan against the Central Powers of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria in World War I (1914–1918).