By Dan Sheehan, the Morning Call
On a stormy Sunday night 50 years ago, an explosion over Elkton, Md., created a fireball so bright it caused street lamps in the rural town to shut off.
Residents who had been readying for bed ran into the streets, scared and confused. Times were tense: The president had been assassinated in Dallas two weeks earlier, and the nation was little more than a year removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis that had brought the Cold War world to the edge of nuclear war.
Had Washington — 90 miles away — been bombed?