It seems like Almost Yesterday that the Aetna Powder Company plant at Fayville , Illinois exploded. The force of the explosion in the small community directly across the Mississippi River from Commerce, Missouri, was so powerful that it was felt in Cairo, Illinois, Paducah, Kentucky, and Poplar Bluff, Sikeston , and Cape Girardeau , Missouri. Most residents of the region thought they had experienced an earthquake. Early in the twentieth century Fayville was the home of the largest industrial