The difference being that after WW II the Allied forces were welcomed, in 1923 they were seen as invaders and occupiers which they were of course.

The siphoning off of the best of German industry led to the horrendous hyper-inflation in Germany in 1923. You'll be familiar with stories of people taking their wages home every day in a wheelbarrow and spending them before the cash became worthless the next day.

There's a story of a man who tried to withdraw his savings of 68.000 marks only to be sent a letter containing a 1 million mark note as they'd rounded it up to the closest denomination banknote they had. The stamp on the letter cost 5 million marks. 

There was still a lot of those large denomination bills when I was there Mark.  Still no good for anything other than a joke. Now if these people had gold they still would have been able to buy things. Let this be a lesson to you Tommy.  Man who has all kinds of paper money worth nothing starves, well man with gold eats like King. I think that's and old Jewish saying, or should be.

A personal one this.

14 January 1895 - Diglake Colliery Disaster, 125 years ago today.

77 men were killed when Diglake Colliery, Bignall End, north Staffordshire was inundated by floodwater from a neighbouring abandoned coal mine. 

Of the 77 two were my ancestors - my great-great-grandfather Henry Maddock 48 and his eldest son, my great-great-great-uncle John Maddock 15. 

None of the bodies were recovered and they remain entombed to this day. Their names are recorded on a monument in Audley Churchyard.   

In the Victorian era five men a week, on average, died in Britain in the mining industry.

Relatives on my fathers side were into coal mining in the Falkirk and Polmont area of Scotland.

If you didn’t die by accident then there was always black lung that would kill you before you reached middle age. I think I posted the picture and write up of one of my great uncles who at 17  was cut in half by the coal cutter which bounced back from from the cut. Living conditions for the miners and their families also were something else. The mining of coal in North America was no better. It wasn’t an occupation that you would get rich doing. The mines usually owned the housing and company stores around the area. You were living on tick most of the time.

 ‍Lots of Welshmen settled in Pennsylvania to work in the mines. Conditions as Pete pointed out were horrendous. The song Sixteen Tons explained it well.

Many Welsh miners went out to Argentina and there is a province in Argentina which actually speaks Welsh. In WW1, when they got around to extensive tunnelling to lay land mines, Welshmen arriving at the front were almost automatically sent to the tunnelling squad, as everybody thought all the Welsh were miners. There was a time when South Wales drove the industrial revolution through steel production, with coal mines and steel mills working side by side. They ran 24 hours a day and it was said that the area was a vision of what all people thought hell would look like, with white hot furnaces by the dozen, all fired by coal lighting up the sky throughout the night with a hellish red blaze of colour and smoke. In the North of Wales, slate mining was the main industry and millions of roofs were waterproofed by slate mined there. Again, old slate villages are great, dark, miserable looking hell holes, even today. I took a steam train ride to Blenau Ffestinniog, the heart of slate ming at one time, and if I ever woke up in a cold hell, I would be in Blenau, especially on a cold wet day. Geezus, they were hard bastards those miners.

What was the name of the town Art or Mark than on one cool low cloud night all had their coal fires going and the smoke and fumes from them ended up killing a bunch of the towns people. We may have talked about this before.

 ‍There was a mine in Carbondale Pennsylvania that caved in 80 or so years ago & a fire started. Still burning today which can be seen at night off Rt. 6. The Welsh influence in PA is still seen today in the names of the little towns with the prefix "Nanty." One near me in western PA is Nanty-Glo. Dunno what "Nanty" means in Welsh. Please advise.

Same Tommy in the Glacé Bay, New Waterford and Sydney Mines area of Cape Breton. Sink holes have opened up where exposing the burning  tunnels. I’ve heard some of the tunnels in that area go out 7 miles out under the sea. Back on the mainland of Nova Scotia and further north in Springhill where Anne Murray is from they had a major cave in back in the early 50’s. I can remember watching it on TV. I notice a lot of very small mines when driving through the area. More like everyone had one in their backyard. Every place was offering tours. 

There were 3 different disasters in Springhill. One in 1891 that killed 125. In 1956 which I think I remember had 39 dead and 88 trapped underground but after days were rescued. In 1958 there was what they called a bump which acted like an earthquake. 75 died and 99 were trapped. Anyone that wasn’t in a squared area or shelter was crushed.

 ‍There was a mine in Carbondale Pennsylvania that caved in 80 or so years ago & a fire started. Still burning today which can be seen at night off Rt. 6. The Welsh influence in PA is still seen today in the names of the little towns with the prefix "Nanty." One near me in western PA is Nanty-Glo. Dunno what "Nanty" means in Welsh. Please advise.

Nant means brook or stream, so Nant-y-Glo literally means the stream/brook of Glo.

What was the name of the town Art or Mark than on one cool low cloud night all had their coal fires going and the smoke and fumes from them ended up killing a bunch of the towns people. We may have talked about this before.

I don't recall this, but it could apply to any industrial town or city up to the 1950s. London had the infamous London Smog in December 1952 when thousands died in the poisonous atmosphere.  

Many Welsh miners went out to Argentina and there is a province in Argentina which actually speaks Welsh. In WW1, when they got around to extensive tunnelling to lay land mines, Welshmen arriving at the front were almost automatically sent to the tunnelling squad, as everybody thought all the Welsh were miners. There was a time when South Wales drove the industrial revolution through steel production, with coal mines and steel mills working side by side. They ran 24 hours a day and it was said that the area was a vision of what all people thought hell would look like, with white hot furnaces by the dozen, all fired by coal lighting up the sky throughout the night with a hellish red blaze of colour and smoke. In the North of Wales, slate mining was the main industry and millions of roofs were waterproofed by slate mined there. Again, old slate villages are great, dark, miserable looking hell holes, even today. I took a steam train ride to Blenau Ffestinniog, the heart of slate ming at one time, and if I ever woke up in a cold hell, I would be in Blenau, especially on a cold wet day. Geezus, they were hard bastards those miners.

I too have made that journey on the steam railway to Blaenau Ffestiniog disembarking in a town where the predominant colour is slate grey surrounded by slate grey hills, found a good secondhand bookshop there though. 

15 January 1559 - Coronation of Elizabeth I.

A curious hybrid Protestant/Catholic ceremony unique in British history. 

Elizabeth had ascended the Throne the previous November upon the death of her half-sister Mary I. Under Mary England had reverted to Catholicism and therefore both Archbishops and all the Bishops were Catholics and unwilling to officiate in a Protestant coronation. There was no Archbishop of Canterbury as he too had died in November. She eventually persuaded the Bishop of Carlisle Owen Oglethorpe to carry out the ceremony. He however would not agree to a wholly Protestant coronation, in the end a hybrid service was drawn up the Catholic elements of which Elizabeth would forgo.  

After consulting the renowned astrologer John Dee the date was set for 15 January. 

 ‍There was a mine in Carbondale Pennsylvania that caved in 80 or so years ago & a fire started. Still burning today which can be seen at night off Rt. 6. The Welsh influence in PA is still seen today in the names of the little towns with the prefix "Nanty." One near me in western PA is Nanty-Glo. Dunno what "Nanty" means in Welsh. Please advise.

Nant means brook or stream, so Nant-y-Glo literally means the stream/brook of Glo.

That make sense as there are numerous streams in the mountains where the mines are. One south of me has a fork where one side is crystal clear while the other is orange from the mine run-off. There has been a minor resurgence of work for coal miners which is in direct correlation to the same for steel workers. The leftys were surprised to learn that you cannot make steel from solar or wind.‍

https://youtu.be/Q2T7QoD2nk4 If you go to that site on youtube, it gives you a demo of splitting slate and shows you just what a remarkable material slate is. It is impervious to anything. It could rain acid and it wouldn't affect it. Besides splitting it, the sides can be squared using a tool which is just a machete and holes can be put in it by tapping a pointed tool into it. Slate is very rarely used these days and now costs a small fortune. If you want to be traditional about these things and build a slate roof, you need the corresponding heavy timber to support it and that comes at a price. Stone roofs are not uncommon over here either and you should see the timber used to support them, pretty heavy duty stuff and only oak will tackle the job correctly. My house has a slate roof and when I moved in I built a brick garage (hand made brick) with a slate roof to match the house. I was passing through a village called Lymm and they were demolishing a farmhouse with a slate roof, so I whipped on over and had a word with a couple of the Micks there, who were happy to make a few bob on the side and dropped a load off for me. These are serious slates and I had to build a really heavy duty roof to support them.

I heard on the news that the last coal mine operation closed down a couple of months ago now.

16 January 1920 - 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, 100 years ago today.

Prohibition, who thought that was a good idea?

There has never been a more ridiculous, ill conceived, fruitcake (ironically what Capone was labelled as) of a piece of legislation than prohibition. The law defied all logic. If a country has never had alcohol, or has been deliberately deprived of it by various mumbo jumbo cults, such as Islam, then they've never known anything different, but to suddenly remove what was a social, cultural and highly desirable staple of a nation's life and culture overnight, in a free society no less, was an act of national lunacy, not to mention that you removed at a stroke the nation's fifth largest industry. You can't actually ban alcohol wholesale as manufacturing industries rely heavily upon it for a multitude of items used by everybody in their daily lives. So, if 60 million gallons of it is being diverted to the drinking classes, what do you do to discourage them from drinking it? That's right, you poison it, which is exactly what the government did and killed almost 12,000 of their own people in the first year for doing what was perfectly legal the year before and was still thought to be throughout the world. It turned millions of law abiding people into criminals and made real criminals immensely wealthy. The government carried on its policy of abject stupidity by hiring 1500 agents to enforce this law, which equated to 75,000 people per agent, so no problem there then? It also came as a shock to the government that their tax coffers were down a tenth and cities found themselves unable to maintain normal life and services when starved of the revenue to pay for them. Millions carried on drinking, it's just that nobody paid any taxes on it and ironically, once again, in this self created madhouse, more bars sprang up than ever before, sometimes double the amount, which operated openly because everybody from the police to the mayor was paid to look the other way. The act turned a whole nation into criminals.

‍To piggyback on this topic.

1791-Whiskey Rebellion, Alexander Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington lobbies for & gets passed an excise tax on alcohol. The new American citizens are outraged & protest with some violence & refusal to pay this duty. The new government proclaims they need the extra $ to pay for the Revolutionary War, the new citizens proclaim that "taxation without representation" was one of the reasons for the Revolutionary War. Washington sends troops to Pennsylvania to quell the rebellion in 1794. Farmers had been using corn liquor to barter for other goods & found this new tax "intolerable."

In a lotto draw in Ontario, a single winner just won 70 million dollars which is tax free here. Do you think that’s enough to retire on? Another Couple north of me in Barrie won 25 million on another lotto. How would it change your life if any of you won it.

You would have friends and long lost relatives coming out of the woodwork. Every charity in the world would somehow know you won it and all would want just a small donation. There have been people here that not only won a large sum once but twice and have managed to go through both wins. I think the best bet would be to move out of the area and start again where no one knows you or about you. If not, you would always worry about being kidnapped etc.

That figure of $70 million is dwarfed by the Euro lottery figure of 167 million pounds. How would that figure change my life? Very little at my age I'm afraid. I would thoroughly enjoy giving millions away. I would take care of all my family, far and wide, then children's charities and just those people who need a washing machine, kid's toys, a central heating system, proper bathroom, a holiday for the kids etc etc. The little things that change people's lives, there's no need for the grand gesture, there are plenty of people in the big, expensive charities doing that. Naturally I'd remain anonymous, as I still wouldn't leave my little shack, as I've always been happy here. If I had won money like that in my 20's I'd have bought myself a large trailer, the best bikes and gone racing around the world but as somebody who always saw the red mist the moment my visor went down, I probably wouldn't have survived it.

‍To piggyback on this topic.

1791-Whiskey Rebellion, Alexander Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington lobbies for & gets passed an excise tax on alcohol. The new American citizens are outraged & protest with some violence & refusal to pay this duty. The new government proclaims they need the extra $ to pay for the Revolutionary War, the new citizens proclaim that "taxation without representation" was one of the reasons for the Revolutionary War. Washington sends troops to Pennsylvania to quell the rebellion in 1794. Farmers had been using corn liquor to barter for other goods & found this new tax "intolerable."

A case of a new regime becoming more tyrannical than the "tyrants" it overthrew? Often the case with revolutions - France, Russia, Iran etc.

An interesting follow up to the Prohibition anniversary.

17 January 1899 - Al(phonse) Capone, born.

The most famous gangster of all time who made it big during Prohibition. 

Strange laws are always enacted by strange people, coupled with psychotic levels of fanaticism and prohibition was no different. I mean, it seems the most unlikely law ever to blight a free, booze loving society, yet a tiny few of the nation managed to inflict it on the rest. However, there was one man in particular who was the driving force behind it, the founding father so to speak and he was Wayne Bidwell Wheeler. Capone was just a crook, whereas Wheeler was far more dangerous, he was a zealot. The reason for his fanatical hatred of booze is almost Pythonesque. He grew up on a farm in Ohio where as a small boy, he was speared through the leg by a pissed up farm hand. From that moment on Wheeler developed a swivel eyed, mouth frothing, howling at the moon hatred of booze. He became the Billy Graham of booze haters, with a god given right to eradicate booze from the nation. He went on to qualify as a lawyer (wouldn't you know it? Always a bad sign) and soon took the job he thought the late JC had created him for, Superintendent of the A.S.L, which is the Anti Saloon League. What is it with these people eh? I don't like it, therefore I'll make sure you don't have it. Leftyism in action. Into politics now he took on a man who was an extremely popular governor who had one major fault, he liked his tipple, which didn't just make him an opponent of Wheeler, it made him a target, a mad dog who must be put down. Wheeler would use every dirty, slimy trick in the book to kill off a boozer, private eyes, threats, blackmail, the lot, as he was the most single minded, one policy politician in US history. Just as certain crackpot crazes can sweep a nation at times, like veganism now, temperance was doing the same in the states. As with all these campaigns, the fanatics make virtue, morality and guilt their main weapons and it's amazing how many idiots jump on the 'look at me, aren't I wonderful?' bandwagon, who have no intention of depriving themselves in private but know how to play the game. Anyway, Wheeler used guilt, morality and his right hand man, God, to pull off a famous victory. He instantly made Ohio dry and within 11 years, 27 other States had followed suite. The path from here is so unlikely, it's truly comical and I'll get around to it tomorrow.

Muhammed Ali was born on this day and the great Bobby Fischer died. I'm a chess enthusiast myself and the mercurial Fischer made chess the biggest story and game on the planet in his time. He fought and won the cold war, sat at a table looking across 64 squares. Question, when was the last monarch to rule an American state? George 111? No, it was Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii, who was deposed in 1893, although Hawaii didn't get fully on board until 1959