1996 Bomb

As many of you will remember, there was a major bomb explosion in the city of Manchester in 1996. According to my travel guide:

"The IRA placed 80,000 lives at risk on a busy Saturday morning in the city centre by detonating a 3500lb bomb. But in a remarkable operation, the emergency services, given 45 minutes warning, cleared the streets and nobody was killed. The bomb was inside a van and positioned next to the postbox pictured here. This survived the blast, and is the only thing that carries any memorial to this event. The damage estimates from the explosion, which ripped out the prime retail area of the city, amounted to 700GBP, with 670 businesses having to relocate. The city response was lively and positive and the atrocity was turned into an opportunity. Within a few weeks and months, a Lord mayor's fund had raised money to help those affected and a decision had been taken to rebuild the city centre better than before."

I can tell you that today, the city's main shopping area surrounds the former destruction and on a Saturday morning, the streets are literally teeming with people out shopping. There are street performers and open air markets. I was told by the tour guide that the removed this post box from the site during the renovation, but returned it to the same position. Today there is a small gold plaque attached to the post box to mark its place in history, but you could walk right by it and never know the piece of history you just experienced.

The plaque on the post box reads: "This postbox remained standing almost undamaged on June 15th, 1996 when this area was devestated by a bomb. The box was removed during the rebuilding of the city area and was returned to its original site on November 22nd 1999."

PS - of course, someone on the tour also suggested that they construct the buildings out of whatever the make those post boxes out of. Hmm... not a bad idea.