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Wilkes-Barre is named for British colonial politicians John Wilkes and Isaac Barre. The city was founded in 1768 by John Durkee and a group of European settlers, and sustained several attacks by area Native American tribes.
The discovery of anthracite coal in the 1800s brought hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the area, and also brought numerous entrepreneurs. By the turn of the 20th century, Wilkes-Barre was home to numerous stores, breweries, mills, and factories. During this time, it was nicknamed "The Diamond City," due to the abundance of coal.
After the stock market crash of 1929, Wilkes-Barre began to economically suffer, as the coal industry attempted to survive the crash. The movement from coal to oil, gasFor other meanings see gas (disambiguation). A gas is one of the phases of matter. Gases are, like liquids, fluids: they have the ability to flow and do not resist deformation. Unlike liquids, however, unconstrained gases do not occupy a fixed volume, but, and electricityElectricity is a property of certain subatomic particles, such as electrons and protons, that gives rise to attractive and repulsive forces between them. It is one of the four fundamental forces of nature, and is a conserved property of matter that can be for heat had a negative effect on the area's economy, causing many mines to shut down. After World War IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough, Wilkes-Barre had an unemploymentIn economics, a person who is able and willing to work yet is unable to find a paying job is considered unemployed . The unemployment rate measures the number of unemployed workers as a proportion of the total civilian labor force, where the latter includ rate as high as 12%.
The Knox Mine Disaster was the final nail in the local coal industry's coffin. In January 1959, the Susquehanna River broke through into a mine shaft , flooding every mine in the area. The collapse was caused by a shaft that was dug too close to the river bed. Twelve miners drowned in the flood.
Another disaster ravaged Wilkes-Barre's economy in 1972, when Hurricane Agnes flooded the city with nine feet of water. Thousands of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed by the flood.
Wilkes-Barre is currently experiencing a boom in the minimum-wage job market and has a record-high number of homes for sale.