The Honkeiko
colliery was in
Manchuria,
China. On April 26, 1942, a
coal dust explosion killed 1,549 miners. The
Honkeiko colliery disaster is the worst mining disaster ever recorded, giving China a
dubious entry in the
Guinness World Records.
For comparison, the worst recorded mining disaster in Europe took 1,060 lives (occured in 1906 in Courrieres, France), making it the second worst. The third worst took 447 lives.