The World: Back to Them and Us

COAL is the soul of Easington, a mining town of 10,000 on the North Sea coast of England, best known throughout the British Isles as the scene of a 1951 colliery disaster in which 85 men died. For four generations, Easington miners have been bequeathing their picks to their sons. The town was founded in 1911, when the first shaft of the Easington Colliery was sunk into the rich coal seams that lace County Durham. The tunneling now extends for miles in all directions. To reach the end of the most distant coal face, which extends 51 miles offshore beneath...

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