Johannesburg, South Africa, was founded as a mining town after gold was discovered there in 1884. Boom towns sprung up quickly around the area, but one soon became more boom than town. The Johannesburg suburb of Braamfontein received a trainload of dynamite in February 1896. With no room in the warehouses, the eight railroad cars containing 2,300 cases of dynamite were shunted off to a side track. What happened three days later when they were starting to unload the cars will never be known for sure, because all the witnesses were killed, but it is thought that a switcher locomotive collided with the cargo cars. It wouldn't have to be a big collision, but the resulting explosion sure was.
The explosion could be felt 200 kilometers away. It left a crater 60 meters (250 feet) long. The image above shows how the railroad tracks were curled up at the end of the crater, with wrecked buildings in the background. More than 70 people were killed and 3,000 were left homeless when their houses were flattened. The investigation afterward couldn't piece together the exact events of that day, but it uncovered many egregious safety violations in the everyday handling of dynamite in the mining industry. Read the story of the Braamfontein explosion and see more pictures at Amusing Planet.