At 7:20 a.m. on May 16, 1874, the 43-foot-high Mill River Dam above Williamsburg, Massachusetts failed, killing 138 people, including 43 children under the age of ten. This failure was the worst in U.S. history, up to that time. ... The failure of a coal-waste impoundment at the valley's head took 125 lives, and caused more than $400 million ...Web