Fauld Crater
Today (Friday) is the 65th anniversary of Britain's biggest explosion, caused when an underground ammunition dump blew up killing more than seventy people.
Just after 11am on November 27 1944, the world's largest ever non-nuclear explosion left a crater 400ft deep and three quarters of a mile wide when a worker used a chisel to work on a bomb causing a spark that set off an explosive chain reaction destroying 5,000 tonnes of ammunition, destined to be dropped on Nazi Germany, in one enormous blast.
The munitions were being stockpiled by the RAF deep below the surface in a Gypsum mine in Staffordshire. The Fauld mine was packed full with tonnes of bombs and small arms ammunition. When it exploded an entire farm above was wiped out and a pub, half a mile, away was destroyed.
Among the dead were six RAF personnel and six Italian prisoners of war known as 'co-operators', but the biggest number of dead were civilians. Records of those who worked in the mine were poor meaning an exact figure of the dead will never be established. It is certain though, that 18 people were never recovered.