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History’s Most Catastrophic Man-made Errors

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2020 34 min

Wanggongchang Explosion - Beijing — The Wanggongchang Explosion devastated Beijing. Pintrest

35. The Great Gunpowder Factory That Went Up and Took Half a City With It

Contemporary map of 1626 Ming China. Wikimedia

The Wanggongchang Armory was one of half a dozen factories in the Beijing area that produced weapons and ammunition. Administered by the Ministry of Public Works, the armories were vital to Beijing’s security, and to the defense and military readiness of Ming China. With a workforce of 70 to 80 people, Wanggonchang manufactured arrows, swords, spears, cannons, and gunpowder.

Gunpowder’s and cannons’ importance had grown in recent years, as Ming armies found themselves in a steadily escalating arms race with the Manchus of today’s Manchuria. Cannons and an ample supply of gunpowder were key to keeping the Manchus out of China. To keep them from falling into enemy hands, those factories were built in Beijing, protected by the capital’s thick and powerful walls. While much thought went into using the city to protect the gunpowder factories, little thought seems to have gone into protecting the city from the gunpowder factories if something went wrong.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.