by the explosion of five magazines holding 300 tons of dynamite, 105,000 kegs of black blasting powder, and five rail wagons filled with dynamite housed at a DuPont blasting powder plant. A crater deep was left where the plant stood. Several hundred people were injured. The plant was closed at the time, so deaths were light, with only three plant employees being killed, E. S. "Old Man" Thompson, Clarence Brady and Joseph Flynt, and Elgin, Illinois resident Alice Finch, who died of shock. Most buildings in a radius were rendered flat or uninhabitable. The explosion was felt within a radius of , and largely thought to be an earthquake. Residents in nearby Lake County, Illinois saw the fireball and remembering the Peshtigo fire fled their houses, jumping into Lake Michigan. Police in Chicago scoured the streets, looking for the site of a bombing. Windows were shattered in Madison, Wisconsin, away, and the explosion was heard up to away. A DuPont spokesman was reported as being perplexed by the coverage of the blast, quoted as saying "explosions occur every day in steel mills, flouring mills and grain elevators with hardly a line in the paper." Alum Chine explosion Alum Chine was a Welsh freighter (out of Cardiff) carrying 343 tons of dynamite for use during construction of the Panama Canal. She was anchored off Hawkins Point, near the entrance to Baltimore Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland. She exploded on 7 March 1913, killing over 30, injuring about 60, and destroying a tugboat and two barges. Most accounts describe two distinct explosions. World War I HMS Princess Irene at Sheerness On 27 May 1915, the converted minelayer suffered a blast. Wreckage was thrown up to , a collier ship away had its crane blown off and a crew member killed by a fragment weighing . A child ashore was killed by another fragment. A case of butter was found away. A total of 352 people were killed but one crew member survived, with severe burns. The ship had been loaded with 300 naval mines containing more than 150 tons of high explosive. An inquiry blamed faulty priming, possibly by untrained personnel. Faversham explosion On 2 April 1916, an explosion ripped through the gunpowder mill at Uplees, near Faversham, Kent, when 200 tons of TNT ignited. 105 people died in the explosion. The munitions factory was next to the Thames estuary, and the explosion