This is the screamer that appeared in the Mount Pleasant Journal, on February 2, 1891. It concerns what became known as the Mammoth Mine Disaster, when, according to the New York Times's "special from Scottdale, Penn.,"

by an explosion of fire-damp in the Mammoth shaft of the H. C. Frick Coke Company 110 sturdy miners were hurled into eternity and a number seriously injured. The explosion occurred this morning shortly after 9 o’clock and it is supposed was the result of the ignition of a miner’s oil lamp. The after damp which followed the fire-damp explosion suffocated nearly every workman. A few men realizing the awful situation fell to the ground thereby preventing the gas from striking them. The persons not killed are in such a critical condition that their deaths are momentarily expected. Up to this writing sixty bodies have been recovered, all without a sign of life. The mine is on fire and it is feared that the rest of the bodies will be cremated.

Almost all of the dead were immigrants, most from Poland and Hungary.

The mine superintendant was the first of the managerial staff to arrive. He and several other managers had previously been up all night at a Robert Burns birthday celebration at a local hotel.

Researching the Mammoth disaster took up most of my day yesterday. Between this festering history and the raw present tense of Aliza's death, my outlook assumed a rather sullen color. Yet late in the day Tom and I went to our first ballroom-dancing class and and were clumsy and stepped on each other's feet and laughed and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Later in the day I was asked to help organize a chorus of local children to sing one of Aliza's favorite songs at her funeral next weekend. Later in the day my son Paul said, "I will figure out all the vocal parts. I will make this happen. I know we can create something beautiful." In other words, it was a ratchety difficult painful dreadful day that nonetheless had its expanses of sunshine.