At 9:45am on February 20, 1947, Downtown was rocked by a blast the L.A. Times called the worst in the city's history. The explosion leveled the O'Conner Electro-Plating Corporation's building at 926 E. Pico, killing 15 people, injuring 151 and demolishing nearby houses.
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The force of the explosion sent debris hurtling through the air and created a sound that could be heard miles away. 116 buildings in the area suffered damage.
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Investigators blamed the devastation on a tank of perchloric acid that the plant's chief chemist, Robert M. Magee, had been tending at the time of the blast. The bodies of Magee and his assistant, Miss Alice Iba, were never found and were believed "blown to bits."
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LAPL
The O'Connor Electro-Plating Co. had been in business in the same one-story brick building for almost 20 years. The plant was managed by Robert J. O'Connor, son of the company's founder. O'Connor knew little about chemistry, so he had hired Robert M. Magee, 35, who presented impressive credentials. But in truth, Magee had been working as a foreman at a local dairy and was only an aspiring chemist without even a high school diploma.
For almost a year, Magee worked on a revolutionary process for polishing aluminum, anxiously waiting to get it patented. He was using a mixture of 140 gallons of acetic anhydride, nearly as volatile as nitroglycerin.
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At an inquest held in March, prosecutors alleged that Magee, who claimed to have a PhD from M.I.T., had manufactured his credentials and had in fact never graduated from high school. The jury found that his mixing of acids and oxidizing materials led to the blast.
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UCLA Digital Library
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for further reading about the blast, go here
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...854621,00.html