October 14 in business history: a deadline that had already passed, a range limit, and a fair's opening day

Three 14 Octobers turned on a limit that had been fixed somewhere else: a date written into a statute, the range of a fighter's fuel tank, and a world's fair that would open whether the trains ran or not.

On the morning of 14 October 1913, 950 men were on the day shift at the Universal Colliery at Senghenydd, in south Wales. An explosion tore through the western workings and threw the two-ton cage up the Lancaster shaft into the headgear 1. The men on the east side were brought up; the west side burned.

The final toll was 440 — 439 miners and one rescuer — the worst mining disaster in Britain 1. Sixty of the dead were under 20, and eight were 14 years old. The explosion left 205 widows, 542 children and 62 dependent parents 1.

The pit had done this before. An explosion in 1901 killed 81 men, and the inquiry found its air thick with coal dust 12.

The Coal Mines Act 1911 required collieries to fit ventilation fans that could reverse the airflow, and fixed 1 January 1913 as the date. Universal's owners asked for longer and were given eight and a half months: the new deadline was 16 September 1913 2. On 14 October the fans at Senghenydd still could not be reversed 2.

In May 1914 the manager, Edward Shaw, was convicted on eight of 17 charges and fined £24. The owners, the Lewis Merthyr Coal Company, were convicted of the single charge of failing to fit reversible fans and fined £10 with £5.25 costs 1. A local newspaper did the arithmetic and ran a headline: miners' lives at 5½ pence each 1.

Decision mirror: A century later the same failure was priced differently. The Córrego do Feijão dam at Brumadinho failed on 25 January 2019 and killed 270 people 3. Vale then signed a judicial reparation agreement on 4 February 2021 with a total estimated value of R$37.7 billion, about US$7 billion at the time 3. By August 2026 it had paid R$22.65 billion of that, including compensation to more than 17,600 people, with R$6.2 billion still scheduled for 2026 to 2030 3. In 1913 the men who ran the mine paid £34. In 2019 the same kind of failure cost R$37.7 billion.

On 14 October 1943, 291 B-17s of the Eighth Air Force flew 400 miles to bomb the ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt 4. Air planners believed Germany's war machine ran on those bearings, and that destroying them would cascade through the rest of it 4.

The escort went with them for only the first 200 miles. At Aachen the P-47s reached the limit of their range and turned for home. The German fighters, waiting on radar, came in behind them. Before the formations reached the target they had lost 28 aircraft 4.

The bombing was accurate and it made almost no difference. Of 1,122 high-explosive bombs dropped, 143 landed on the factory area and 88 were direct hits. Later analysis put the fall in German ball-bearing production at 10 per cent 4. Germany had laid in bearings before the raid, was buying more from Italy, Sweden and Switzerland, and dispersed the plants afterwards 5.

The crews paid the bill. Sixty B-17s were lost, 17 more were written off and 121 came home damaged. More than 600 airmen were killed, wounded or missing — close to a fifth of those who flew, and about double the loss rate the Eighth Air Force treated as sustainable 4. Its commander, Ira Eaker, told Washington that the force now had "our teeth in the Hun Air Force's neck" 4. For the rest of 1943 the Eighth attacked France, the coast and the Ruhr, where it could be escorted. It went deep into Germany again only after the P-51 Mustang arrived 4.

Decision mirror: Europe ran the reverse experiment on its own dependency and got the other answer. Russia supplied about 45 per cent of the European Union's gas imports in 2022 and 27 per cent of its oil. By 2025 those shares were 12 per cent and 2 per cent, and EU gas demand had fallen roughly 19 per cent below its pre-crisis average 6. A choke point holds only if what sits behind it cannot be bought elsewhere, moved, or gone without.

Montreal's metro opened on Friday 14 October 1966, with a ceremony at Berri-de Montigny station attended by Mayor Jean Drapeau, the transport commission's chairman Lucien L'Allier and France's minister of state, Louis Joxe 7. Trains began running on the 12.6 miles of Lines 1 and 2, with 20 stations in service — the first complete transit system to run on rubber tyres 7.

The whole thing had cost $213 million 7. Four stations — Beaudry and Frontenac on Line 1, Victoria Square and Bonaventure on Line 2 — were unfinished and would not take traffic until early in the new year. The opening had come a week before the municipal election, which Drapeau's party won in a landslide 7.

The city had debated a subway since 1902 without building one. The council voted the first $132 million for a 16-kilometre network on 3 November 1961, and construction began on 23 May 1962 8. From then the project had a date it could not move: the line out to the world's fair site was still to be finished when Expo 67 opened on 28 April 1967 79.

Decision mirror: The next extension carries a softer date and a harder price. In March 2025 Ottawa raised its share of the metro's Blue Line extension to just over $1.9 billion. That buys five stations in about six kilometres of tunnel, with commissioning scheduled for 2031 10. Expo 67 drew 50,306,648 paid admissions between 28 April and 29 October 1967, on a site built for 26 million visits 9. In 1966 a fair's opening day did what six decades of argument had not. The next five stations have until 2031.