Exactly what the title says, are governmentvshut downs a thing that happened say in the mid 20th century, how about the 19th century? Did the founding members of the USA have shut downs did they anticipate them? Where they or are they common in other governments?
This is a quirk of the US federal government that's fairly recent. You see, before the early 1980s, the Government continued to operate in the absence of a budget. (The act that creates the national park system, for example, doesn't contemplate its closure just because the Congress can't pass a budget on time.) But there's also something called the Antideficiency Act, which bans the federal government from spending money that hasn't been budgeted. Carter's attorney general, Civiletti, chose to interpret the existing Antideficiency Act statute as the controlling one, so, no budget, no operations except for "essential" employees.
(In theory, Congress could permanently ban shutdowns by revising the Antideficiency Act to automatically renew previous appropriation levels in the absence of a budget, but that's a tangent. Likewise, a new attorney general could issue an opinion saying that the previous rule controls, because the legality of the shutdowns has never been tested by a court.)
Anyway, the widespread misery that a shutdown causes means it was weaponized as a political tactic by the hard right, something not possible in other types of governments. (Famously, the Clinton Administration shutdowns in 1995-6 were caused by Speaker Newt Gingrich's intransigence over social programs.) In the Parliament of the UK, a failure to pass a budget bill results in a general election, full stop, and the last year's budget is used automatically, so there is no such thing as a shutdown.
I can't comment on America, but in Britain, no it hasn't happened, because the way the government worked was different.
In the US system, the government is split into different parts that must cooperate in order to function. If they can't agree, there's no funding for the government.
The UK government does not have different wings of government in the same sense as the American one does. It does have a seperate judiciary, but there's no split between executive and legislature, and since the early 20th century the Parliament Act allows the House of Commons to ignore the House of Lords with the government's permission.
Thus, there's no situation comparable to America, where different parties might control different parts of the government. If the Prime Minister ever lot a majority in the House of Commons, then MPs could vote for a Motion of No Confidence, forcing an election. Certain votes were considered "Confidence issues", which means if the government lost them, it's like a vote of No Confidence. This included funding bills. Thus, if a Prime Minister ever failed to pass funding for that year's government, there would be an election to create a new government which can pass a Budget.
(Historically. It's a little different now due to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2011, but this is how it worked for most of the 20th century.)
A number of governments have fallen to Votes of No Confidence, but this rarely occurs during a Majority government; it would require politicians to vote against their own party, and if they are unhappy with their leader, they have historically preferred to vote for a new leader and keep power as the majority party (something that's much more difficult in America; Republican Congressmen can't easily replace a Republican President, etc.)
In the 20th century, there were three times a government lost a vote of No Confidence, but none of them were over Finance Bills. They were all Minority governments. Two were relying on third parties (the Liberals) to prop them up, and collapsed when the Liberal party pulled its support. The other one collapsed almost immediately as they didn't have a third party's support.
Unlike the 20th century, in the 19th century, there were a few times when governments with working majorities lost votes of No Confidence (the last time was in 1895), due to division within the government over certain issues. Inability to pass Finance Bills and fund the government was rare, but did happen in 1885, forcing the resignation of the Liberal government and the coming to power of a new Conservative government.
Tldr; The way the British political system worked historically meant that if a government was ever unable to pass a funding bill, there would be an election. As the government only needs to control one House to pass a Finance Bill, this hasn't happened since the 19th century, and even then it was rare.