Coal mining in Pennsylvania took a terrible toll of death and injury for workers and environmental degradation for communities. For 26 years between 1890 and 1920, mining deaths exceeded one thousand per year in the Commonwealth. The worst coal mining disaster in...
On September 17, 1862, while the armies of the North and South wrestled to a bloody stalemate at Antietam in Maryland, a mighty explosion ripped through the Allegheny Arsenal in Lawrenceville killing 78 workers, mostly women and girls who worked there filling...
The International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers was formed on February 4, 1896 at a meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with 16 delegates from the local unions in Boston, Massachusetts, Buffalo, New York, Chicago, Illinois,...
The Morewood massacre was an armed labor-union conflict in Morewood, Pennsylvania, in Westmoreland County, west of the present-day borough of Mount Pleasant in 1891. Nine coke workers were shot and killed during a strike for higher wages and an eight-hour work day....
The Mammoth Mine disaster or Frick Mine explosion occurred on January 27, 1891 just after 9:00 AM in the Mammoth No. 1 mine in Mount Pleasant Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Newspapers reported that fired was ignited by a miner’s oil lamp, resulting...
