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Cádiz Explosion

1947 disasters in Spain1947 in SpainExplosions in 1947Explosions in Spain
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Exposición "La Explosión de Cádiz de 1947" (37359048182)

The Cádiz Explosion was a military accident which occurred at 9:45 pm, on 18 August 1947 at a storage depot in the Base de Defensas Submarinas (Submarine Defence Base) in Cádiz, Spain, when some 1,737 sea mines, torpedoes and depth charges (of a total of 2,228 distributed in two depots), containing 200 tonnes of TNT and amatol, exploded for unknown reasons.Official figures given at the time were 150 dead, a figure that has since been reduced to 147, and 5,000 injured, but other sources refer to much higher figures given the extension of the explosion and the populated districts and types of buildings destroyed.As well as the actual military facilities destroyed, the populated districts of San Severiano and San José were seriously damaged. Among the buildings totally wrecked there were the Asilo de Ancianos (old age peoples' home), the Casa Cuna orphanage (41 deaths), a nearby factory (100 workers killed), the Madre De Dios Hospital (no figures given). The Echevarrieta shipyard, right next to the storage depot, and which employed 2,500 workers, only lost 27 men because there were fewer workers on the nightshift. This shipyard had signed a lucrative contract in the mid-1920s to supply the German Navy with German-designed torpedoes and had also built a U-Boat for testing and training.The explosion also destroyed the Punic or Phoenician necropolis, whose excavation works had featured in National Geographic in 1924.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Cádiz Explosion (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Cádiz Explosion
Avenida de la Marina, Cádiz Brunete

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N 36.5239 ° E -6.2828 °
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Avenida de la Marina
11007 Cádiz, Brunete
Andalusia, Spain
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Exposición
Exposición "La Explosión de Cádiz de 1947" (37359048182)
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Cádiz Cathedral
Cádiz Cathedral

Cádiz Cathedral (Spanish: Catedral de Cádiz, Catedral de Santa Cruz de Cádiz) is a Roman Catholic church in Cádiz, southern Spain, and the seat of the Diocese of Cadiz y Ceuta. It was built between 1722 and 1838. The cathedral was declared Bien de Interés Cultural in 1931.The Plaza de la Catedral houses both the Cathedral and the Baroque Santiago church, built in 1635. The church was known as "The Cathedral of The Americas" because it was built with money from the trade between Spain and America. The 18th century was a golden age for Cádiz, and the other cathedral that the city had got, Santa Cruz, was very small for this new moment of Cádiz. The new cathedral was built from 1722 to 1838. The first person who designed the church was architect Vicente Acero, who had also built the Granada Cathedral. Acero left the project and was succeeded by several other architects. As a result, this largely baroque-style cathedral was built over a period of 116 years, and, due to this drawn-out period of construction, the cathedral underwent several major changes to its original design. Though the cathedral was originally intended to be a baroque edifice, it contains rococo elements, and was finally completed in the neoclassical style. Its chapels have many paintings and relics from the old cathedral and monasteries from throughout Spain. In the crypt are buried the composer Manuel de Falla and the poet and playwright José María Pemán, both born in Cádiz. Levante Tower, one of the towers of Cádiz Cathedral, is open to the public and shows panoramas of the city from on high.