Dozens of miners are drowned when a mine floods in South Wales

At the Mair Colliery near Neath in South Wales, the working of a new shaft breached a wall that released into the mine the hundreds of thousands of gallons accumulated from old workings over the years. With the whole mine flooding rapidly, frantic efforts were made to bring the eighty-one workers and their pit-ponies to the surface. Fifty-five men and two ponies escaped; twenty-six other men and all their animals were drowned. (By John Osborne)