On December 13, 1916 one of the deadliest avalanche in history occurred, and barely made the newspapers. The White Friday avalanches were a little remembered event of the little remembered, but uniquely horrible, Italian front in the Great War.
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.