Oklahoma City Bombing

I noticed some young kids around my age did not know what the Oklahoma City Bombing was and I realized it was because 9/11 takes all the attention away from it but people have to remember that 9/11 was not the first terrorist attack in the U.S. It was a truck bombing on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. That is 6 years before 9/11 so terrorist attacks were not very common in the United States compared to other war torn countries around the world. But this really opened up Americas eyes to domestic terrorism and what can actually happen out of nowhere. Until the 2001 September 11 attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil and remains the deadliest incident of domestic terrorism in United States history. This bomb really did some damage as it killed 168 people and injured 680 people as it destroyed more than a third of the building also. It also caused an estimated $652 million worth of damage but nothing as important of the lives of those in the building that day. Never had we seen that many people die and get injured and the whole nation was heartbroken for the state of Oklahoma. 

The two men who did this horrible act of terrorism were Americans upset with the government which was so surprising that someone was so fed up with their situation that they wanted to do that. They were both charged and one got death by lethal injection and other got life in prison but nothing could make up for the lives lost and those families. As a result of the bombing, the U.S. Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 to help with events like this in the future but we soon realized that it was not enough.

On April 19, 2000, the Oklahoma City National Memorial was dedicated on the site of the Murrah Federal Building, commemorating the victims of the bombing. Remembrance services are held every year on April 19, at the time of the explosion.