April 20 · This Day in America
On April 20, 1914, the Colorado National Guard and gunmen for the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company open fire on a tent colony of striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado. The miners had been thrown out of company houses for demanding an eight-hour day and the simple right to organize. By the end of the day the camp is burning. Twenty-one people are dead — among them eleven children, found later in a pit dug beneath a tent where they had hidden from the bullets. The country recoils. Congress investigates; its 1915 report becomes ammunition for child-labor laws and the eight-hour workday that most Americans now take for granted. The ground at Ludlow is a National Historic Landmark today, kept by the union. Some of the rights clocked into an ordinary American workweek were bought here, in the worst possible way, by people whose names are carved on a single stone.
Source: www.nps.gov
Also on this day · 1972
On April 20, 1972, the lunar module Orion sets down in the rugged Descartes Highlands of the Moon, and John Young and Charles Duke become the ninth and tenth humans to walk on another world. They spend three days driving the lunar rover across ancient hills, collecting more than 200 pounds of rock. Duke leaves behind a photograph of his family in the dust, the names of his sons written on the back, for whoever might one day find it.
Source: www.nasa.gov