Bhopal Disaster
Trees frame a rusting building at the abandoned former Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, Nov. 11, 2014. On the night of Dec. 2, 1984, the factory owned by the U.S. multinational Union Carbide Corp. accidentally leaked cyanide gas into the air, killing thousands of largely poor Indians in the central city of Bhopal. Reuters

On Dec. 3, 1984, 40 metric tons of methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a manufacturing plant in Bhopal, India. Hundreds of thousands were exposed to the deadly gas and unofficial estimates put the death toll at up to 19,000. The leak is considered the worst industrial accident in history and it's one of several that led to the loss of thousands of lives.

Silk.co created a database of the worst industrial disasters, based on loss of life, and the Bhopal disaster far exceeds the next disaster on the list. On April 26, 1942, a coal-dust explosion at Benxihu Colliery, a mine structure, killed 1,549. The mine, located at Benxi, Liaoning province, China, was initially a Chinese-Japanese venture before begin taken over by Japan during the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese forced the coal miners to work long shifts in terrible work conditions and used excessive force to punish the Chinese workers.

The third-worst disaster took place on April 24, 2013, in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The Rana Plaza garment factory collapse killed 1,129. An agreement known as the Rana Plaza Arrangement earlier this year provided for compensation for affected workers, family members and survivors, but many have not been compensated yet and less than half of the $40 million considered to be the sum needed to properly compensate victims had been raised as of April 2014.

The Courrières mine disaster in France killed 1,099 people on March 10, 1906. Miners attempted to stop the spread of a fire in what was known as the Cecil pit on March 9, but an explosion the next day triggered a series of fires throughout the mines. A rescue party of 40 were killed in their attempts to save the trapped miners.

In 1914, a gas explosion at the Mitsubishi Hojyo coal mine in Japan killed 687.

The Texas City disaster is considered the worst industrial accident in U.S. history. On April 16, 1947, a fire on the SS Grandcamp detonated its cargo of ammonium nitrate. The explosion triggered a second explosion on the SS High Flyer. The two blasts led to a series of fires in the Port of Texas City and nearby refinery facilities; at least 500 to 600 people died.

The Texas disaster led to the first class-action lawsuit, which made its way to the Supreme Court. In the case of Dalehite v. United States, the court ruled in favor of the government, but Congress passed a bill to compensate the victims; it paid a total of $17 million to close to 1,400 individuals.