Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have his facts right, but he has his century wrong -- and his timing is crass. The most deadly mining accident in Turkish history occurred yesterday in Soma, with at least 274 dead and more missing. As rescue work continued, Erdogan arrived to offer condolences and pledge an investigation. He also, inexplicably, offered a kind of history lesson, saying mining accidents "are the nature of the business" and citing an 1866 accident at a mine in the U.K. that killed 361, a U.S. accident in 1907 that took 307 lives and a 1947 catastrophe in China in which 1,549 died.
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