-
What Happened to Residents’ Health Long After the Donora Death Fog?
“Our scientists tell us that the Donora episode was a rare phenomenon. We hope and pray it will never recur. This study by the Public Health Service into the Donora episode, the most exhaustive ever made on a problem in air pollution, is a step toward positive assurance that such a thing will not happen…
-
From Boom to Bust: What Happened to Little Webster?
Cuddled along a bend in the Monongahela River in southwestern Pennsylvania, across from the industrial town of Donora, Webster once boasted a population of about two thousand. Anyone traveling up the Mon around the turn of the twentieth century would have seen a charming village at the base of
-
Meet the Heroic Docs of the Donora Smog Disaster of 1948
If you’ve read anything about the Donora smog of 1948, you’ve probably read about how the town’s doctor’s traveled on foot or by car around Donora and Webster during the smog, doing whatever they could to prevent residents from suffocating. Let’s get to know five of those heroic physicians: DeWees Brown, Herbert Levin, Ralph Koehler,…
-
Meet the Toxicologist Who Nailed the Smelter Industry After the Donora Smog
The full story of the Donora smog disaster could not be told without two names popping into the forefront, those of Philip Drinker and Mary O. Amdur. Drinker had famously invented the “iron lung” for victims of polio, principally children. Polio, more accurately called poliomyelitis, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Victims who…
-
Did US Steel Officials Know Dangers of Asbestos Used in Cement City?
Why were asbestos shingles used in Center City? Didn’t US Steel know the dangers?
-
The Unimaginable Grief of One Mon Valley Family in the early 1900s
Howard and Iva Dail Hart suffered more than their share of grief working and living in the Mon Valley many years ago, when life was brutally difficult.
-
How Thomas Edison’s Cement Contributed to Donora’s Storied History
The Wizard of Menlo Park helped ease a housing crisis in Donora.
-
What Donora’s Smog Plaque Gets Right … And Wrong
A prominent bronze plaque at the southern entrance to Donora honors smog victims…and then some.
-
Blasts (Furnaces) From the Past
Who was Opechancanough, and what did he have to do with blast furnaces in Donora?
-
Founder of Donora Biked ‘High’
Who was Prince Wells, and how did he get the great William Donner so blinkin’ high? William Henry Donner, founder of Donora, was an astute, no-nonsense businessman. He became business partners with some of the wealthiest men in history, including Henry Clay Frick and the Mellon brothers, Andrew and Thomas, owners of US Steel. He…
