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19381776 Club

A 450-ton rock explodes over Butler County; fragments rain down near Chicora

Residents near West Winfield mistook the crack and flash for the local powder magazine going up. Two pieces are recovered; the main mass is nowhere to be found.

Twelve miles above Butler County, Pennsylvania, something went wrong for a very large rock. On June 24, 1938, a meteoroid estimated at 450 metric tons tore into Earth's atmosphere and detonated in an airburst powerful enough that investigators later compared it to the Halifax Explosion of 1917 — the largest accidental man-made blast in history up to that point. Residents near West Winfield heard the crack and saw the flash, and assumed the local powder magazine had gone up. Fragments rained down near the small borough of Chicora; two pieces were recovered quickly, weighing 242 grams and 61 grams respectively. The main mass, most of the original 450 tons, was never found…

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More from June 24
1922

The American Professional Football Association votes to call itself the National Football League

Two years after clubs from four states formalized the game in a Canton auto showroom, the league sheds its borrowed name for one that fits its ambitions.
1937

Navy orders North Carolina and Washington; first battleships laid down in a decade carry 16-inch guns

Japan's refusal to sign the London Naval Treaty triggers an escalator clause, swapping the planned fourteen-inch guns for nine sixteen-inch weapons on both hulls.
1948

Stalin seals Berlin; two million people are cut off from the West

Soviet forces close all rail and barge routes into the Western sectors, 110 miles inside Soviet territory, over the Allies' plan to introduce the Deutsche Mark.
20211776 Club
The 12-story, 136-unit beachfront condo gave way at 1:22 a.m.; a $15 million repair program had been approved, but the main structural work had not yet begun.
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Read the full June 24 edition →Everything that happened on June 24 →
More from The World Wars
1944

160,000 troops cross the Channel; Allied forces land on five Normandy beaches under fire

Paratroopers went in past midnight, 5,000 vessels follow at dawn, and by nightfall a contested beachhead holds at a cost of at least 10,000 casualties.
1942

Dive bombers sink three Japanese carriers in six minutes; a fourth falls before dark

Cryptanalysts cracked Tokyo's naval code and fed the enemy a lie about a water shortage, and Nagumo's flight decks are crowded with fueled, armed planes when the Americans arrive.
1935

Dr. Bob Smith takes his last drink, then walks into surgery

The Akron surgeon, sober after hours of talk with New York businessman Bill Wilson, steps into the operating room following a final relapse at an Atlantic City convention.
1942

Japanese submarine shells Fort Stevens; Doney orders blackout, holds his guns

Commander Tagami surfaces I-25 at the Columbia River mouth after dark, fires seventeen rounds, and slips away undamaged, leaving cut telephone lines on the Oregon coast.
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