On this day, May 18, in 1927, an angry school board member in Bath Township, Mich., bombed the Bath Consolidated School, killing 45 people and injuring 58.
Most of the victims were children ages 7 to 12. The attack was the deadliest mass murder at a school in U.S. history.
School board member Andrew Kehoe spent months planting hundreds of pounds of dynamite in the school building. Kehoe blamed property taxes levied to fund the building’s construction for his own financial hardships, including the foreclosure on his farm.
The morning of the bombing, Kehoe first killed his wife and set his farm on fire. As rescuers gathered at the blown-up school, he drove up and detonated a shrapnel-filled bomb, killing himself and the school superintendent.
