Talk:Monongah mining disaster

United States: West Virginia Low‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	West Virginia portal This article is supported by WikiProject West Virginia (assessed as Mid-importance).

Appalachia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Appalachia, a collaborative effort to increase coverage of Appalachia and the Appalachian Mountains. If you would like to participate, go to the project page to see a list of related articles needing attention.AppalachiaWikipedia:WikiProject AppalachiaTemplate:WikiProject AppalachiaAppalachia articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Mining Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mining, a collaborative project to organize and improve articles related to mining and mineral industries. If you would like to participate, you can edit the attached article, or visit the project page, where you can see a list of open tasks, join in the discussion, or join the project.MiningWikipedia:WikiProject MiningTemplate:WikiProject MiningMining articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Disaster management Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Disaster management, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Disaster management on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Disaster managementWikipedia:WikiProject Disaster managementTemplate:WikiProject Disaster managementDisaster management articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Italy Low‑importance

	Italy portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Italy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Italy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ItalyWikipedia:WikiProject ItalyTemplate:WikiProject ItalyItaly articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Occupational Safety and Health Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to occupational safety and health on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Occupational Safety and HealthWikipedia:WikiProject Occupational Safety and HealthTemplate:WikiProject Occupational Safety and HealthOccupational Safety and Health articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on December 6, 2014, December 6, 2021, and December 6, 2022.

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 30 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lrr00006.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:25, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled

This article is a wreck. It cites three different totals for the number of victims: 362, "upward of 500," and 956. One of these is accurate, the others aren't. It needs cleanup and rewriting badly. 75.195.36.90 (talk) 22:09, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This passage is confusing: "In all, the lives of 362 boys and men were lost in the underground explosion, leaving 250 widows and over 1000 children without support. In October 1964 Reverend Everett Francis Briggs stated that a fairer estimate of the victims of the Monongah Disaster would be upward of 500. The victims were actually 956.." If 362 lives were lost, where do these 956 victims come from? 68.183.65.148 01:40, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

also- "The victims were actually 956, the vast majority of them (171) were Italians".. how is 171 out of 956 a "vast majority".. I think these numbers are messed up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.86.116.211 (talk) 00:02, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The following was found to be incorrect:

"and has been described as "the worst mining disaster in American History", however, it is not since there have been multiple other mine disasters with higher death tolls.^{[citation needed]}".

I wondered what worse accident there had been, so I started looking. On the "Mining accident" page I found a claim that Monongah was the deadliest, and found a reference.^[1] This reference states no higher death tolls and to me it is more reliable than the uncited claim that this accident was not the deadliest, so I have removed this claim. Andreas Willow 08:05, 7 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It all depends what you call a victim. Arguably, the widows and children left behind were victims, even though they weren't killed in the disaster. Confusing, but perhaps Reverend Everett Francis Briggs was trying to make a point that the disaster had a greater impact than simply on those who died. Skinsmoke (talk) 13:20, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For corrections to the history of the disaster see Virginia History, Fall, 2013 pp. 63-92. Joseph L. Tropea — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph L.Tropea (talk • contribs) 18:09, 12 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This article is nearly incomprehensible. Just look at this passage: "The official list of 362 miners no longer obtains. At this point, it becomes 361, if Louis Patch is removed from the list, a man who lived and married a year after the explosion." What does this mean when it says that a list of casualties "no longer obtains"? "At this point..." At WHAT point? The narrative, especially in the Rescue Attempts section, is so jumbled and poorly written that it needs to be completely redone for clarity and grammar.

References

^ Historical Data on Mine Disasters in the United States U.S. Department of Labor

Victims

Are Negros not Americans then? Skinsmoke (talk) 12:55, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect this is the language used in the reports from the time. Presumably all those labeled as "Negro" are actually Americans. I would like to see this specified as being the historical accounting and not a modern one if that's the case, but I don't know enough about this issue or the source material to make properly encyclopedic changes. Miketsu (talk) 05:40, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Weren't they all Americans ? That is, the Polish, Greek, Irish, etc were probably all Americans as well as the Blacks. This appears to be an attempt to break down the numbers by ethnic origin but the use of the term "American" is confusing. I think by "American" they meant White. Ronald Joe Record (talk) 20:24, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of victims

I'm not sure this list of victims is in keeping with Wikipedia's standards. First of all, the article says that the victim count was inaccurate. Secondly, it's just a list of names with otherwise no encyclopedic value at all; one doesn't learn anything from knowing that someone named "Jno. Majeska, Jr" was one of the victims labelled "Polish". I rather agree with the philosophy expressed in Wikipedia:Victim Lists. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 04:15, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I'm going to be bold and remove it. Hoof Hearted (talk) 19:58, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For corrections on Monongah's very poor history, including number of miners, widows and children, see: West Virginia History, Fall, 2013 pp. 63-92. Joseph L. Tropea

External links modified (February 2018)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Monongah mining disaster. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 18:46, 4 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Adding New Sections

What would be some good sections to add to this article to further understand it even more.--Lrr00006 (talk) 19:40, 23 February 2021 (UTC) Here is my bibliography on this article. If you could look at it and give me some feedback that would be great. https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/User:Lrr00006/Monongah_Mine_Disaster/Bibliography --Lrr00006 (talk) 14:28, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What company operated the mine?

No information at all in the article about the company responsible for this disaster. 173.71.191.229 (talk) 02:21, 31 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sources point to it being the Fairmont Coal Company. I'm sure the book that most of this article is drawing from has more info but I can't find a copy since the e-book site it was linked to isn't working anymore. Recon rabbit 03:48, 31 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Historical Data on Mine Disasters in the United States U.S. Department of Labor

[1]