Thursday, January 18, 1940 - Factory explosions kills 5 workers

[Louis]

In Britain... In a series of explosions, five employees are killed at the Waltham Abbey explosives factory in Essex. Nazi saboteurs are blamed. Meanwhile, a British company delivers the first of a very large admiralty order for buoyant electrical cable. It is to be used in the fight to remove the threat of magnetic mines to British ships. When the cable is towed behind a wooden trawler, a current generated by the ship will produce a magnetic field around it sufficient to detonate a mine.

In Warsaw... The Nazi Gestapo executes 250 Jews in woods outside the city following the arrest of the Jewish-born Catholic resistance leader Andrzej Kott.