On Christmas Eve 1913, the Western Federation of Miners organized a party for strikers and their families at the Italian Benevolent Society hall in Calumet. The hall was packed with between 400 and 500 people when someone shouted "fire." There was no fire, but 73 people, 62 of them children, were crushed to death trying to escape. This became known as the Italian Hall Disaster. __There were several investigations into the disaster. The first, by the coroner, contained serious errors. Witnesses who did not speak English were forced to answer questions in English; most witnesses were not asked follow up questions. It appears that many witnesses who were called had not seen what happened. After three days, the coroner issued a ruling that did not give a cause of death, apparently clearing those viewed as the obvious culprits: out-of-town strike breakers. Until recently, the transcript of the inquest was not widely available, so people could not evaluate the ruling of the coroner. There are now copies of the inquest available for researchers to examine.