That morning they donated to honor dead women. By noon, twenty-one of them were dead

Emergencies and World Disasters · Sep 21, 2026 · 21m

That morning they donated to honor dead women. By noon, twenty-one of them were dead

Fear that the very sun could be lethal: one burning signal flare left in sunlight turned a warehouse of 108 women into an inferno that killed 21 by noon. How did a superintendent place several hundred flares on metal pans in full sun, next to open windows and paper cartridges, and never face a single charge?

In this episode, we tell the story of the Washington Arsenal explosion of June 17, 1864, tracing who worked there, what was stored, and how a single flare ignited a chain that destroyed a building and…