NEW LONDON, Texas — Editor's Note: Video above from March 2021.
On an afternoon 85 years ago today, a natural gas leak caused an explosion in East Texas that remains the worst school tragedy in America’s history.
The explosion on March 18, 1937, leveled the London High and Junior High school building in Rusk County and killed 294 people — mostly children.
Miles Toler, former president of the New London Ex-Students Association, referred to the explosion as "the day a generation died."
Read more from our CBS19 paper partner, Longview News-Journal.