
Nitroglycerin...

Invented in 1847, nitroglycerin has been employed in the construction, demolition, and mining industries.
In April 1866,
three crates of nitroglycerin were shipped to California for the Central Pacific Railroad, which planned to experiment with it as a blasting explosive to expedite the construction of the 1,659-foot (506 m)-long Summit Tunnel through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. One of the crates exploded, destroying a Wells Fargo company office in San Francisco and killing 15 people. This led to a complete ban on the transportation of liquid nitroglycerin in California.
Liquid nitroglycerin was widely banned elsewhere as well, and these legal restrictions led to Alfred Nobel and his company's developing dynamite in 1867.