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Nitrogen fixation anniversary: Modern agriculture needs to use fertilizer more efficiently. – Slate Magazine.

A good summary of the good and bad that came from the discovery of how to fix nitrogen. But the prize goes to the following part.

…to loosen it up, they drilled holes in it, stuck some dynamite in, and lit the fuse. The resulting blast killed more than 500 people (including those workers), destroyed 80 percent of the homes in the town, and ripped the roofs off of homes 15 miles away.