It is difficult to pin down a number, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association estimates that between one third and one half million people died in Atlantic hurricanes between 1492 and 1994. More than a thousand of those lives were lost on July 31st, 1715, in a tragedy more remembered for treasure than people.
During the civil war, the manufacture of powder and explosives was often handled by the most vulnerable, young women and children, whose labor was needed when so many men had been sent off to war. On March 13, 1863, the confederacy experienced a munitions disaster, in the confederate capitol of Richmond.