- More than 50 years ago, Aberfan, a small coal mining town in Wales, was irreversibly changed in a few minutes when 144 people, mostly school children, were killed by a coal-waste landslide.
- What made it worse was that it was a mistake. An investigative tribunal found Wales' National Coal Board was entirely at fault for the slip.
- The disaster has come back into focus, because it's one of the key storylines in season three of "The Crown."
- $4.
It was one of the United Kingdom's worst tragedies, and it was a man-made disaster.
In 1966, 300,000 cubic yards of coal sludge buried a Welsh primary school, and 19 houses in Aberfan, Wales. Hundreds of people tried to dig the school children, teachers, and people who lived nearby, from out of the wreckage, but 144 people died.
In an in-depth article titled "$4," the BBC's Ceri Jackson, called the disaster and its lingering effects, an "obscenity," and "an upsetting reminder of perhaps why and how much our society changed so much in little over a generation."
A year after the disaster, an investigative tribunal ruled that the National Coal Board was entirely to blame, although it wasn't villainy, but ineptitude.
The disaster has come back into the focus, because it's one of the key storylines in season three of "$4." Queen Elizabeth held off visiting for eight days, and when she did, she cried in public, which was highly unusual. Taking as long as she did is meant to be one of $4.
Here's how the tragedy happened, in photos.