Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

The final unidentified victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—a 1911 tragedy that had a huge impact on the creation of American labor laws and building codes—have finally been matched with names. What's really interesting to me: The fact that the bodies weren't identified with DNA, or any other modern science, but through simple detective work. Even before they died, the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory were largely anonymous, except to the people who knew them personally. So, while official historians didn't know the names of all the dead, those names were always out there, buried in articles from small, neighborhood newspapers and passed down in family histories.