Courrières

A coal dust explosion tore through a hundred and ten kilometres of galleries at half past six in the morning, across three pits of the same mine.

The company sealed the workings to starve the fire, with men still below. Rescue was disorganised and incomplete. German mine rescue teams crossed the border with breathing apparatus the French pits did not have, eight years before the two countries went to war.

One thousand and ninety-nine were killed, many of them boys of thirteen and fourteen. It remains the worst mining disaster in European history.

Thirteen men walked out alive after twenty days underground, having drunk from a pool and eaten a dead horse. A fourteenth was found four days after that.

The anger at the company's conduct produced a strike of sixty thousand miners and the eight-hour day in France.