Drag to turn the globe

Events/Disaster · 1951

Orient No. 2 mine explosion

Disaster, 1951-12-21, United States.

What happened

An explosion at Orient No. 2 mine in West Frankfort, Illinois killed 119 of the 256 miners underground. NIOSH says an open ventilation door let methane flow from old panels to an active section.1,2,3

Why it matters

It is the deadliest US coal mine disaster after 1940 on the MSHA list.1,2,3

Story cards

Around the same time

  1. Battle of Blair Mountain

    Battle of Blair Mountain. Wikidata records 95 deaths.4

  2. Construction of Norilsk combine begins

    Nornickel describes itself as one of the world's largest producers of palladium and Class I nickel, and the plant was built by Gulag labour.5,6,7

  3. Colonel Nichols buys the Staten Island uranium and 3,000 tons more

    Contracts with Sengier secured the ore needed for wartime work.8,9

  4. Orient No. 2 mine explosion

    It is the deadliest US coal mine disaster after 1940 on the MSHA list.1,2,3

  5. Centralia mine fire starts

    Centralia mine fire starts.10

  6. Gecamines established

    Gecamines established.11

  7. Zambia takes 51 percent of the copper mines

    The state became the main owner of the Copperbelt for the next 30 years.12,13,14

  8. Marc Rich + Co AG established

    The firm grew from a metals trader into a producer and trader of more than 90 commodities.15,16

Open the full timeline

Where next

Events

An example ofConsol No. 9 mine explosion at FarmingtonOrient No. 2 was the deadliest US coal disaster after 1940 until Farmington in 1968.1An example ofCentralia No. 5 mine explosionFour years before, Centralia No. 5 killed 111 miners.1

Sources

  1. Fact Sheet 95-8: Historical Data on Mine Disasters in the United States US Mine Safety and Health Administration
  2. Underground Coal Mine Disasters 1900-2010: Events, Responses, and a Look to the Future NIOSH (Brnich and Kowalski-Trakofker)
  3. West Frankfort (item Q575514), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  4. Wikidata item Q3329738 (Battle of Blair Mountain)
  5. Building Norilsk, chapter 7 of The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag Hoover Institution Press (S. Ertz)
  6. Our history (Annual Report 2023) Nornickel
  7. Norilsk (item Q175517), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  8. Manhattan Project: Procurement of Uranium US Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information
  9. Wikidata item Q18432 (Staten Island)
  10. Wikidata item Q16256909 (Centralia mine fire starts)
  11. Wikidata item Q391647 (Gecamines established)
  12. Nationalization and Mining: Lessons from Zambia (abstract) OneMine
  13. About ZCCM-IH (history) ZCCM Investments Holdings
  14. Copperbelt Province (item Q1131523), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  15. Glencore timeline
  16. Baar (item Q64087), coordinate location P625 Wikidata

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

Keep exploring

Stories with these minerals

The Super Pit gold mine at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, at sunsetMining historyGold rushes, then and nowGold and lithium · WorldwideThe Chuquicamata copper mine in Chile's Atacama Desert, photographed from the International Space StationMining historyThe biggest copper pitsCopper · Utah and ChileThe world runs on rockThe ChipThe minerals inside every computer chipThe world runs on rockThe MindThe metal and power behind AI

All mining storiesThe world runs on rockAll mineralsMining by country

Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0; Chuquicamata from the ISS by Alexander Gerst (ESA), CC BY-SA 2.0.