1634 King of England Charles I levies the "Ship Money" tax on all English and Welsh counties.
1817 First Mississippi showboat leaves Nashville on its maiden voyage.
1818 The 49th parallel becomes the border between the US and Canada.
….. A Royal Commission to investigate the working conditions of children in coal mines was issued on 20th October 1840. Its report is considered to be one of the most important documents in British industrial history. The commission sent investigators to every coal mine in Great Britain and Ireland to interview working children, young adults, parents, employees, educators, medical professionals, and clergymen regarding the hours children worked, their ages, the nature of their work and safety procedures.
The commission's investigators found that due to the rise of industrialisation and coal mining, children as young as five had begun entering the workforce. They were cheap to employ and were expected to work up to 14 hours per day. Coal Mines in this period were cramped, poorly ventilated and highly dangerous with little attention paid to health and safety. Children were employed assisting the actual coal cutting, operating the ventilation doors pulling coal carts and looking after the pit ponies. They were often injured or killed by explosions, roof falls, being run over by carts and climbing into the workings of industrial machinery to clear a jam.
Some extracts from the Reports; "Nearly a year ago there was an accident and most of us were burned. I was carried home by a man. It hurt very much because the skin was burnt off my face. I couldn't work for six months." Phillip Phillips, aged 9, Plymouth Mines, Merthyr.
"I got my head crushed a short time since by a piece of roof falling..." William Skidmore, aged 8, Buttery Hatch Colliery, Mynydd Islwyn.
"...got my legs crushed some time since, which threw me off work some weeks." John Reece, aged 14, Hengoed Colliery.
"I help my father and I have been working here for twelve months. I carry his tools for him and fill the drams with the coal he has cut or blasted down. I went to school for a few days and learned my a.b.c." John Reece, aged 8, Plymouth Mines, Merthyr.
"I have been driving horses since I was seven but for one year before that I looked after an air door. I would like to go to school but I am too tired as I work for twelve hours." Philip Davies, aged 10, Dinas Colliery, Rhondda.
"My employment is to cart coals from the head to the main road; the distance is 60 yards; there are no wheels to the carts; I push them before me; sometimes I drag them, as the cart sometimes is pulled on us, and we get crushed often." Edward Edwards, aged 9, Yskyn Colliery, Briton Ferry.
"We are doorkeepers in the four-foot level. We leave the house before six each morning and are in the level until seven o’clock and sometimes later. We get 2p a day and our light costs us 2½p a week. Rachel was in a day school and she can read a little. She was run over by a dram a while ago and was home ill a long time, but she has got over it."
Elizabeth Williams, aged 10 and Mary and Rachel Enoch, 11 and 12 respectively, Dowlais Pits, Merthyr.
The report shocked society and the ensuing public outcry swiftly led to legislation to secure minimum safety standards and controls on the employment of children;
…..
On October 20th 1886, the city of Trelew in the province of Chubut, Patagonia in Argentina was founded by Lewis Jones. …
1915 Prime Minister David Lloyd George granted women their 'Right to Serve', thus opening up many new areas of employment for women. Trade Unionists were concerned that the move would depress wages.
1946 'Muffin the Mule', a wooden puppet operated by Annette Mills (sister of actor Sir John Mills) first appeared in a children's television programme on BBC TV.
… In October 1927, a storm severely damaged the track of the Pwllheli and Llanbedrog Tramway. It subsequently, never reopened and was the last horse-drawn tram service in Wales.
The tramway was originally built in 1894 for the purposes of carrying stone from the Carreg-y-defaid quarry for the construction of the new holiday resort at Pwllheli. Soon after, the tramway started to carry passengers and was reported as being packed to capacity during the National Eisteddfod at Pwllheli in 1925.
…
1968 American Dick Fosbury, using his unconventional technique, wins the men's high jump gold medal with 2.24 m at the Mexico City Olympics; the "Fosbury Flop" becomes accepted as the most efficient technique.
20 Oct 1977 Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd boarded a chartered plane after playing a concert at Greenville Memorial Auditorium. The band was headed to Baton Rouge for a concert the following night, but the plane ran out of fuel, and the pilots attempted an emergency landing that, tragically, failed. Lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines were killed in the crash, as were backing singer Cassie Gaines (Steve’s older sister), and the band’s assistant road manager, Dean Kilpatrick. The accident took place just three days after the release of the group’s fifth studio album, Street Survivors.
20 Oct 1976 The Led Zeppelin film The Song Remains The Same, premiered in New York City. The charity night raised $25,000 for the save the children fund. The filming took place during the summer of 1973, during three nights of concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York City, with additional footage shot at Shepperton Studios in Surrey.
Thanks to the musical and film versions of a novel set in show-boat life, the popular image is of a large, stern-wheeled steamer with a rather ornate, tiered superstructure, apparently carrying assorted colourful characters up and down the rivers.
A few years ago the novel was read in serial form on the radio. (It may have been dramatised - I can't quite recall that detail.) Its introduction explained a "show-boat" was normally a barge carrying a small theatre and entertainment troupe, towed by a tug back and forth along the navigable rivers to give shows at each town. The story is not about the boat as such, but about a fictional family leading this itinerant life.
Most of the the "wedding-cake" style and other river-going ships were purely for goods and passenger transport; and I don't suppose many were big, over-ornate things.
