Established on April 15, 1904, by Andrew Carnegie, the Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Hero Fund Commission awards the Carnegie Medal in the United States and Canada to persons who risk their lives to save others. Carnegie was inspired by heroic acts that followed the January 25, 1904, explosion in the nearby Harwick Mine, and he also founded ten similar funds in Europe. Many of the explosion's 181 victims are buried in St. Mark's Cemetery just south of here.