On September 17, 1862, as the nation reeled from the slaughter at the Battle of Antietam, a different kind of battle unfolded on the home front. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a series of catastrophic explosions ripped through the Allegheny Arsenal, the industrial heart of the Union war effort. The blast killed 78 people, most of whom were young women and girls, in what remains the single worst civilian disaster of the American Civil War.  
 
This episode tells the forgotten story of the Allegheny Arsenal tragedy. While the nation’s attention was consumed by the news from Antietam, the horrific events in Pittsburgh were relegated to the back pages and quickly faded from public memory. We delve into the lives of the female workers—many of them teenage daughters of immigrant families—who toiled in hazardous conditions to produce the ammunition that armed the Union army. We investigate the chain of negligence that led to the disaster, from spilled gunpowder on a newly laid stone road to ignored warnings from the workers themselves. Through harrowing eyewitness accounts, this episode reconstructs the "horrid shower" of fire and debris that rained down on the city and honors the victims whose stories were silenced by the thunder of war

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