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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio Welcome Back. I'm your host Eves, and you're

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Speaker 1: tuned into This Day in History Class, a show that

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Speaker 1: takes history and squeezes it into bite size stories. Today

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Speaker 1: is March. The day was March tenth, six an explosion

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Speaker 1: and fire in a French mine killed one thousand people,

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Speaker 1: making it one of the deadliest mining disasters in history.

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Speaker 1: The Courier Colliery was a series of minds near pat

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Speaker 1: kill As of northern France. More than two thousand people

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Speaker 1: worked in the mines and their coal was used mostly

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Speaker 1: in the manufacture of gas. Just days before the explosion,

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Speaker 1: smoke and toxic gas were detected at the site, but

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Speaker 1: the company continued business as usual. Just before seven am

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Speaker 1: on Arch tenth, there was a huge explosion. The explosion

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Speaker 1: was likely caused by the ignition of coal dust in

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Speaker 1: the mind but it's not quite clear what caused that ignition.

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Speaker 1: It could have been caused by the flame of a

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Speaker 1: miner's lamp. It also could have been caused by the

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Speaker 1: mishandling of explosives. Regardless, the fire spread and the explosion

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Speaker 1: caused many deaths and a lot of destruction. Many people

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Speaker 1: died due to asphyxiation or were crushed by falling structures.

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Speaker 1: Others were killed immediately in the blast. Though many people

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Speaker 1: died in the disaster, some escaped and others remained alive

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Speaker 1: in the Minds. After the initial explosion, state engineers took

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Speaker 1: over operations and efforts began to put out fires, find survivors,

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Speaker 1: and recover bodies, but by the end of the first

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Speaker 1: day there were still one thousand and one people underground.

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Speaker 1: Fires and toxic gases underground got in the way of

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Speaker 1: rest you efforts. The stinch of decomposing bodies also posed

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Speaker 1: a health hazard. Experts were sent in from Paris and

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Speaker 1: Germany to help with the rescues. Still, during March, less

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Speaker 1: than two hundred bodies were recovered. That said, a group

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Speaker 1: of thirteen survivors was found on March thirtie, having survived

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Speaker 1: twenty days after the explosion. They had stayed alive by

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Speaker 1: eating horse meat, drinking stagnant water, and resorting to other

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Speaker 1: unappealing but necessary ways to sustain themselves. On April four,

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Speaker 1: another miner was discovered alive. He was the last survivor

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Speaker 1: found in the Courier Minds newspapers in the area reported

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Speaker 1: on the disaster. Miners across France went on strike in

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Speaker 1: response to the tragedy, and an official survivor's fund was

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Speaker 1: established by law, but within the mining communities, people remained

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Speaker 1: upset about the way the rescue was executed. Some people

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Speaker 1: alleged that the state engineers had a vested interest in

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Speaker 1: failing so they could get more work and money from

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Speaker 1: colliery owners. Others believe that rescue efforts were not extensive

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Speaker 1: so the company could save money. Many of the workers

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Speaker 1: who survived were ill or injured in some way, and

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Speaker 1: compensation was not satisfactory. Some of the survivors went back

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Speaker 1: to work in the minds I'm Eaves Jeffcote and hopefully

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Speaker 1: you know a little more about history today than you

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Speaker 1: did yesterday. You can find us on social media at

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Speaker 1: t d I h C Podcast on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

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Speaker 1: you can scan it, turn it into a PDF, and

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Speaker 1: send it to us via email at this day at

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Speaker 1: I heeart media dot com. Thanks for listening, and I

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Speaker 1: hope you'll be back tomorrow for more podcasts for my

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