They warned them about Aberfan. Nobody listened.

[00:00:00]On the 21st of October, >> [music] >> 1966, a mountain of coal waste collapsed onto a village in Wales. [music] It buried a farm, 20 houses, and a primary school full of children, Aberfan. [music] 116 children and 28 adults died in minutes.

[00:00:20]Most of the children were [music] between 7 and 10 years old. It was 9:15 in the morning. They had just sat down for the school day. The National Coal Board had been warned repeatedly. Local residents had written letters, attended meetings, and [music] raised concerns about the stability of the waste tip sitting above their village for [music] years. Every warning was ignored. The inquiry that followed found the National Coal Board guilty of negligence, but nobody went to prison.

[00:00:48]>> [music] >> Nobody was fired. The organization responsible paid compensation, but the government quietly took half of it back to cover the cost of removing the remaining tips. They took money [music] from grieving parents to clean up the disaster their own negligence caused.

[00:01:04]The Queen visited 8 days after the disaster. [music] Many survivors later said they wished she had come sooner. The Prime Minister visited [music] once and spent most of his time with officials rather than families. A village lost an entire generation of children, [music] and the people responsible kept their jobs.

[00:01:24]Follow for more dark British history.

[00:01:26]And tell me in the comments, did you know the government took compensation money back from the Aberfan families?