Can you imagine a day when one-third the men in town were killed on the same day?

It happened in Monongah on Black Friday, Dec. 6, 1907.

362 officially killed when Mines No. 6 and No. 8 exploded. Father Briggs and the gravediggers put the total at more than 500.

It remains the worst coal mine toll in American history.

Officials had to go door to door to see who was NOT killed because fathers often took their sons, some as young as 10 years old, into the mine with them. The whole family used pick and shovel, but only the dad’s metal check number was hooked onto the coal car to determine payment.

3,242 miners died across the nation in 1907, including 13 days apart in Monongah and Van Meter, Pennsylvania, where 239 were killed. That created such an uproar the U.S. Federal Bureau of Mines was created to try to get some safety requirements forced upon the coal operators, who collected their millions in comfortable mansions nowhere near West Virginia as the body count built up.

While annual coal mining deaths numbered more than 1,000 a year in the early part of the 20th century, they decreased to an average of about 451 annual fatalities in the 1950s and to 141 in the 1970s. By 2009, when there were far fewer miners working, there were 18 recorded coal mining deaths, a record low number.

The United States Department of Labor estimated last year that more than 116,000 Americans work in coal mines. Last year, a record-low 16 people died in mine-related accidents.

December 6 is coal mining’s Day of Infamy, only one day apart on the calendar each year from when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 to draw America into World War II.

It was the worst Christmas in Monongah history.

And it was felt strongly in Italy since many of the dead were immigrants from that country. Residents of Italy contributed to the Monongah Heroines Statue in Monongah, dedicated to the wives and children of the 1907 mine victims. And on Wednesday, December 3 there will be a commemoration of the Monongah Mine Disaster at the Chamber of Deputies in Rome. Speakers will include members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Italian Republic.

The Chamber of Deputies, which is similar to our House of Representatives, has 630 seats. I found it interesting that 12 seats are determined by Italian citizens living abroad. It would be like the USA allowing Americans around the world to name a dozen Congressmen rather than casting absentee ballots for their official state of residence.

The Chamber of Deputies have met in Palazzo Montecitorio since 1871. Before that, they met in Turin and Florence. The Chamber was abolished by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from 1939-1943.

No more than 60% of the Chamber candidates for what is like our primaries can be from either gender in an attempt to level the playing field for females. Winning candidates are elected for five years each time.