Topic: Calamities
Seven men were killed and six seriously injured on April 26,1907, in an explosion at the Pacific Coast Company's coal mine at Morgan Slope in Black Diamond in east King County. The following is the in...
On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted and drastically changed the surrounding environment. Despite the devastation to plant, animal, and human communities, ecological recovery developed over ...
This file contains Seattle historian and photographer Paul Dorpat's Now & Then photographs and reflections on Seattle's Great Fire of 1889.
Less than four years after Washington Territory achieved statehood, what was known as America's "Gilded Age" came to an agonizing end when the nation was struck by the worst economic crisis it had yet...
This People's History presents the full official investigative report prepared by the state Inspector of Coal Mines after an explosion at the Roslyn Mine on October 3, 1909, claimed the lives of 10 mi...
This essay describes the 1862 smallpox epidemic among Northwest Coast tribes. It was carried from San Francisco on the steamship Brother Jonathan and arrived at Victoria, British Columbia, on Mar...
Two members of HistoryLink's staff, Alyssa Burrows and Chris Goodman, happened to be at the Speakeasy Cafe the night it burned down. This is Alyssa'a first-hand account of the confused scene as the bu...
On April 23, 1899, two ships collide in the early morning darkness on Commencement Bay. The Glenogle is a 400-foot ocean liner bound for Asia. The City of Kingston is a 246-foot da...
On June 6, 1889, at about 2:45 p.m., what became known as the Great Seattle Fire started when a pot of glue burst into flames in a small cabinet shop on Front Street (today's 1st Avenue). The blaze qu...
On June 7, 1889, the sun rose over a stunned and devastated Seattle. The day before, a massive fire had ravaged the city's commercial core and its waterfront. Seattle had been booming, and over the pr...
Kenneth Knoll was 12 years old when the influenza epidemic came to Spokane. This catastrophic event so impressed him that he felt compelled to describe it 70 years later. His essay is based mainly on ...
Crusty old Harry Truman was the last holdout on Mount St. Helens and likely the first person to die when the volcano erupted on May 18, 1980. The longtime owner of a resort on Spirit Lake in the shado...