April 23, 2018 – Our time machine travels back 100 years, to witness the split-second explosion that blew a chunk of Halifax, Nova Scotia off the map. On December 6, 1917, this key city in supplying the Allies in the Great War, suffered the largest man-made explosion prior to the bombs that ended World War Two — something that caught the attention of physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb.”

On the shore in Canada to witness the collision in the harbor is John U. Bacon, author of The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism. John U. Bacon teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the University of Michigan. He’s written five New York Times bestsellers, including Three and Out, Fourth and Long, and, Endzone.

You can catch him often on NPR and national TV, as well as JohnUBacon.com, @JohnUBacon on Twitter, or Facebook.com/JohnUBaconAuthor.