Terror at the Tower

The almost 900-year-old dungeon in the Tower of London, where historic heroes like Sir Walter Raleigh and villains like Guy Fawkes were once imprisoned, was jammed with the usual crowd of summer tourists last week. Suddenly, the three-ton 18th century Royal George cannon, a favorite exhibit with children, exploded with a deafening roar. The blast hurled the bronze gun barrel five feet into the air, showered bystanders with lethal splinters from the oak carriage, and blew out windows and a door 90 feet above.

The Tower's red-and-black-clad Yeoman Warders (the Beefeaters) scrambled to carry the injured out of the basement. Said Armory Warder Harry Harrington: "It was just like wartime. There was a woman with her leg off, kids with no clothes." When the dust settled, 37 persons, including eight children, had been injured. Two of the victims lost their legs, and a child's foot was found beneath the cannon. One British woman, Dorothy Household, 47, died later that night.

Police said that the explosion had been caused by a 10-lb. plastic bomb, planted under the cannon. Two minutes before it went off, a man identifying himself as a member of the Irish Republican Army phoned the London Daily Mirror saying: "We are planting bombs." He failed to say where the bombs were.

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