Picatinny Arsenal Historical Society

10/18/2026

10/18/2026

10/17/2026

Today in New Jersey History: On October 17, 1933, Albert and his wife, Elsa, arrived in New York Harbor aboard the ocean liner Westernland.

Reporters and a welcoming committee awaited the famous physicist, but his arrival took a different route. Institute for Advanced Study representatives met the ship and escorted his party onto a tugboat bound for New Jersey. Einstein even held his violin case in front of his face to avoid photographers!

From the New Jersey shore, they traveled to Princeton, where Einstein joined the Institute for Advanced Study as one of its first faculty members.

10/14/2026

Nice to see the 1926 explosion posted on Shop Morris County!

On July 10, 1926, lightning hit a Navy magazine next to Picatinny Arsenal.

The strike at the Lake Denmark Naval Am******on Depot set off a chain of massive explosions that spread across the area, including Picatinny. Nineteen people were killed and dozens more were hurt.

Twelve of the 19 were U.S. Marines. Four sailors, one soldier and two civilians also died, and the blasts scattered unexploded shells across the installation.

The disaster changed how the military stores am******on for good. This July, 100 years later, Picatinny laid a wreath at the memorial in this photo.

Had you ever heard this story, or is this the first time?

Photo: U.S. Army

10/14/2026

10/12/2026

In February 1942, the war came to the New Jersey coast. The destroyer USS Jacob Jones, built in Camden, was patrolling off Cape May and the Delaware Capes when she came across the burning wreckage of the tanker R.P. Resor, which a German U-boat had torpedoed hours earlier. She circled for two hours searching for survivors, then resumed her patrol. The next morning, the same U-boat hit her with two torpedoes while she sailed blacked out. The first one struck just behind the bridge and set off her magazine, and she stayed afloat only about 45 minutes. Around 30 men made it onto rafts, but when the stern went under, unsecured depth charges exploded among them. An Army plane spotted the rafts hours later, and a patrol boat pulled 12 men from the water. One died on the way to Cape May, leaving 11 survivors out of a crew of 149. It remains one of the costliest U.S. Navy losses along the Jersey coast.

10/11/2026

And sponsor one of our wreaths @ https://wreathsacrossamerica.org/pages/192389/Overview/?relatedId=0

A sacrifice made for our freedom is a sacrifice that will always be remembered. Thank a veteran.

10/09/2026

One of the most interesting things that I learned while on the Battleship New Jersey was there there are many redundancies in place in the event that part of the ship becomes disabled. For example, there are multiple locations from where the weapons can be fired, four different locations to steer the ship, and if all else fails, the 16" guns can be loaded and shot similar to a Civil War cannon. These redundancies were needed to prevent the ship from becoming a 58 thousand ton paperweight! Photo of the USS New Jersey bombarding positions during the Vietnam War.