It was the rise of the machines causing headaches for industrial workers and their employers on this day in 1965.
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The rapid advance of automation in manufacturing forced the NSW Industrial Commission to issue a ruling insisting on at least three months' notice or pay in lieu for workers losing their jobs to machines.
The affected industries were brick, tile and pottery, where workers would receive three months' notice, and the printing and cardboard box-making industries, whose laid-off workers would need six months' notice.
But proving the value of steady human hands in this time of machine advancement was another story detailing a dramatic surgery in Vietnam.
Dubbed a "human bomb", South Vietnamese farmer Nguyen Van Chinh went into surgery to have a six-inch-long live grenade removed from his back.
The operation happened in a shed behind a hospital in Saigon to minimise the risk of an explosion hurting other patients.
An American air force surgeon, Major-General James Humphreys, worked on the patient from a hole in a 10-foot-high stack of sand bags, peering through a bullet-proof window.
He used a five-foot-long scalpel and six-foot-long pincers. The successful operation lasted four minutes and Major-General Humphreys shouted "it's in the box" as he lowered the grenade into a sand-filled box, much to everyone's relief - especially Mr Van Chinh.