Kellingley Colliery, the last deep coal mine in Great Britain, closes.

Kellingley Colliery, known affectionately as the 'Big K', was a deep coal mine in North Yorkshire, England, 3.6 miles (5.8 km) east of Ferrybridge power station. It was owned and operated by UK Coal.

Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a "pit", and above-ground mining structures are referred to as a "pit head". In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine.

Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of 209,331 km² (80,823 sq mi), it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island, and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is dominated by a maritime climate with narrow temperature differences between seasons. The island of Ireland, with an area 40 per cent that of Great Britain, is to the west – these islands, along with over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands and named substantial rocks, comprise the British Isles archipelago.