For some Oklahomans, the tragic school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut dredge up bitter memories of perhaps the most terrible day in this state's history, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995.

Timothy McVeigh used a rental truck loaded with bombs created from fertilizer and fuel to blow up the building April 19, 1995.

The blast killed 168 people, including 19 children under the age of 6.

Most of the children were killed in the America's Kids Daycare, housed in the ground floor of the building right next to where McVeigh parked the bomb-laden truck.

The tragic deaths of those children was the hardest part of that incident for many Americans to try to understand.

It's believed McVeigh was fully aware of the presence of the daycare and its location when he planned his attack.

KRMG's Consumer Guru, Clark Howard, made the point during his Monday evening broadcast.

"When the federal building was blown up in Oklahoma City, there were a great number children who died in a daycare center on site, and there was something about us as Americans that those children who died -- that just hit us so much harder than the adults that were murdered that day," Howard told his audience.

McVeigh was executed for his crime in 2001.