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Whitestone Hospital

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Whitestone Hospital was a 103-bed general hospital (births, deaths, in-between) with notable patients. It was located in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens, NY. and built on a property that originally was a farm. A nearby tower from back then has since been landmarked. The hospital was also known as Whitestone General Hospital.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Whitestone Hospital (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Whitestone Hospital
166th Street, New York Queens

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N 40.7918 ° E -73.7977 °
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166th Street 10-15
11357 New York, Queens
New York, United States
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Sylvania Electric Products explosion

On the morning of July 2, 1956, three explosions involving scrap thorium occurred at the Sylvania Electric Products' Metallurgical Laboratory in Bayside, (now Bay Terrace) Queens, New York. Nine people were injured, some severely. One 28 year old employee, Oliver Blaber died on August 6, 1956. Workers described three fireballs.Sylvania was experimenting with large-scale production of thorium metal from thorium dioxide. Part of the process of shutting down this experiment was the reprocessing and burning of thorium metal powder sludges that went unprocessed during the experiment. It was during the incineration of this material that the explosion occurred. At the time the metallurgical properties of thorium were not well understood. The plant's medical director stated to the press at the time that the employee who died as a result, Oliver Blaber, had succumbed to "complications caused by third-degree burns". Blaber's son would later cite the death certificate, which listed "thorium poisoning". Victims of the explosions were treated at Flushing Hospital, where both Blaber's mother and wife worked. Blaber died a month after the incident, on August 6, 1956.Three hundred people – 225 employees, 50 firefighters, and 25 police officers – were tested for radiation. The role of radiation was downplayed, especially to assuage fears that a nuclear explosion had occurred. The debris from the explosion was ultimately disposed of in the ocean.