My maternal grandmother would have been 107 today.
It is also the 36th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, in which a waste tip at a Welsh coal mine collapsed, burying part of the neighbouring village including three classrooms of the junior school. 144 people died, including 116 children. I don’t think anyone can fail to be moved by the images of that disaster, including the picture of the local policeman carrying a child that had been pulled from the rubble. I particularly suggest that you read the accounts of the witnesses:
It stopped as it hit the last house down No.1 Moy Road and there was a terrible silence. In that silence you couldn’t hear a bird or a child. (resident)
…the school was smashed over with this rubble. And I remember standing looking at that and thinking, well, the reality of it, I just couldn’t believe it. And from where there were, at least to my calculations, a hundred children there wasn’t a sound. (teacher)