A massive dust explosion, likely triggered by an improper industrial blasting charge, ripped through the Courrières coal mine in northern France, killing 1,099 miners. It remains the worst industrial mining disaster in European history, wiping out entire generations of families in neighboring villages. The tragedy exposed the lethal danger of using non-permitted explosives in environments heavy with airborne coal dust and methane gas.

This tragedy sparked a wave of elegiac and political poetry across France and Europe, condemning industrial neglect and the horrors of subterranean labor. It solidified the image of the coal mine as a modern, capitalistic underworld that consumed the poor through sudden fire.