50 Fun Facts About Coal

What kind of rock is coal?

It forms in layers called seams as buried peat is cooked by heat and pressure over millions of years.

What do decaying plants become first, before heat and pressure turn them into coal?

Most modern peat bogs formed about 12,000 years ago after the last ice age.

Which geologic period is literally named 'coal-bearing'?

The name comes from the Latin carbo and fero, coined by William Conybeare and William Phillips in 1822.

Roughly what share of all coal beds were laid down in just two geologic periods?

Atmospheric oxygen above 30% and forests full of slow-rotting lignin helped pile up the peat.

Which is the highest rank of coal?

It has the most carbon, the fewest impurities and the highest energy density, and is mostly burned for heating.

Which soft, low-rank coal is often called 'brown coal'?

The name comes from the Latin for wood, and it comes out of the ground full of moisture.

What is the approximate carbon content of the highest-rank coal?

Brown coal sits at about 25–35% carbon, which is why it gives so little heat per tonne.

Which rank of coal is the most abundant on Earth?

It is burned for electricity and, when low in sulfur and phosphorus, turned into coke for steelmaking.

Which US state holds the world's largest known deposits of the highest-rank coal?

The Coal Region of the northeast holds an estimated seven billion short tons.

Why was the trademarked brand 'Blue Coal' actually blue?

Glen Alden Coal Company wanted its product to stand out from competitors in Northeastern markets.

What is the key distinction between thermal coal and metallurgical coal?

Thermal (steam) coal raises steam for power; metallurgical (coking) coal is burned at high heat to make steel.

How is coke made from coal?

It serves as both fuel and reducing agent when smelting iron ore in a blast furnace.

Which geological rule says that, locally, deeper coal is higher in rank?

It holds when the thermal gradient is vertical; an igneous sill can break it, as at Madrid, New Mexico.

What did Neolithic people in Shenyang carve from black brown-coal around 4000 BC?

By 1000 BC coal from the Fushun mine was being used to smelt copper.

What was the Old English form of the word 'coal'?

It traces back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'live coal'.

About what share of the world's electricity did coal supply in 2020?

It also provided roughly a quarter of global primary energy that year.

Which country mines almost half the world's coal?

It produces about 4.8 billion tons a year; India is next at roughly a tenth.

Which two countries export the most coal?

Russia is the next-biggest exporter.

Roughly how many tonnes of carbon dioxide came from burning coal in 2024?

That was more than a quarter of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

Which 2021 agreement committed countries to 'phasing down' coal?

Meeting the Paris 2 °C target requires halving coal use between 2020 and 2030.

About what share of world coal production comes from surface mining?

The earth removed above a seam is called overburden and is dumped in long strips.

What is the rock and soil removed to expose a coal seam called?

When the ratio of overburden to coal gets too high, mines switch to augering into the highwall.

Which underground method accounts for about half of all underground coal production?

A shearer works a face of 300 metres or more while hydraulic supports advance with it and the roof falls behind.

In room and pillar mining, what holds up the roof?

The pillars can contain up to 40 percent of the seam; 'retreat mining' later pulls them out.

Up to how many vertical feet of mountain are blasted away in mountaintop removal mining?

The excess rock goes into neighbouring valleys as 'holler fills', mostly in Appalachia.

Which region is the largest coal-producing area in the United States?

Straddling Wyoming and Montana, in 2007 it out-produced the entire Appalachian region.

What is the explosive mine gas known as firedamp?

A firedamp blast can set off a far deadlier coal-dust explosion through the whole mine.

Who invented the gauze-screened miners' safety lamp in 1815?

Engine-wright George Stephenson demonstrated a rival lamp at Killingworth Colliery a month earlier.

Which future railway pioneer built a competing safety lamp in 1815?

His design let air in through tiny holes; the Royal Society paper on Davy's lamp came a month later.

Which 1812 disaster near Newcastle, killing 92 men, spurred the push for safer mine lamps?

Clergymen Robert Gray and John Hodgson wrote to Davy asking him to tackle firedamp explosions.

Which gas were canaries carried into mines to detect?

John Scott Haldane proposed a warm-blooded sentinel in 1895, and some cages had oxygen tanks to revive the bird.

Who first proposed using a warm-blooded animal to detect gas in mines, in 1895?

Canaries were in use by 1896 in Britain, the US and Canada.

What is the common name for coal workers' pneumoconiosis?

The US still sees about 4,000 new cases a year, China about 10,000.

A 1966 colliery spoil-tip collapse killed 116 children in which Welsh village?

After weeks of rain the saturated tip slid as slurry onto Pantglas Junior School just as lessons began.

Which 1907 explosion, killing 362 miners, is called the worst mining disaster in US history?

It helped bring about the creation of the US Bureau of Mines; 171 of the dead were Italian migrants.

In which country was Europe's worst mining accident, which killed 1,099 miners in 1906?

Images of Courrières spread as postcards; the average French resident sent fifteen that year.

A mine fire has burned beneath which American borough since 1962?

The population fell from 1,000 in 1980 to five by 2020, and the ZIP code was withdrawn in 2002.

Coal smoke caused the Great Smog that smothered London in which year?

It lasted five December days; later estimates put the death toll at 10,000 to 12,000.

Which UK law, passed in response to the Great Smog, pushed households toward smokeless fuels?

It created 'smoke control areas' and was eventually repealed by the Clean Air Act 1993.

In which year did UK coal production peak, at 287 million tonnes?

It has fallen ever since as heavy industry shrank and cleaner generation took over.

Who led the National Union of Mineworkers during the 1984–85 British strike?

The year-long strike ended on 3 March 1985 in a decisive win for Margaret Thatcher's government.

Taking what 'to Newcastle' became a byword for pointless effort, first recorded in 1538?

From 1530 a royal act gave a cartel of Newcastle burgesses a monopoly on Tyneside coal shipments.

Who built the first steam locomotive to haul a load over a distance, at Pen-y-darren in 1804?

He had trialled an earlier engine at Coalbrookdale in 1802.

Whitby jet, the black Victorian mourning gem, is a form of what?

It is fossilized wood from trees similar to the Chilean pine.

Who won the Best Actress Oscar for playing Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter?

The 1980 film earned seven nominations including Best Picture; Tommy Lee Jones and Levon Helm co-starred.

What is the approximate carbon content of the most abundant coal rank, by weight?

The rest is mostly hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and about 1.8% sulfur.

How does the highest-rank coal tend to break, like thick glass?

Its Mohs hardness of 2.75 to 3 and semi-metallic lustre also set it apart.

What minimum temperature range is needed to form the highest-rank coal?

Sub-bituminous coal can form at as little as 35 to 80 °C.

Fine-grained, hydrogen-rich 'cannel' is sometimes called what, after the way it burns?

It is a fine-grained, hydrogen-rich coal made mostly of liptinite that burns with a bright flame.

What fuel was used to smelt copper at China's Fushun mine as early as 1000 BC?

The oldest intentional use of black coal in Europe is documented at Ostrava in the Czech Republic.