100 years ago

“Justice” wrote: “Before many weeks the annual gala in Bootham Park will again take place.

"May I make an appeal to the gala entertainment committee to substitute something else in the place of the performing animals which have annually been seen on their stage?

"As the entertainment committee is composed of humane and kindly people, I cannot believe that they would endorse this survival of barbarism by allowing these helpless animals to be exhibited after the terrible revelations we have had during the past winter, both in the Animals’ Guardian and in the public press, as well as in the excellent tableaux given by the Canine Defence League in York last February in regard to the tortures inflicted on performing animals.”


50 years ago

Police treated packets of cigarettes with a chemical powder after complaints from a Huntington grocer that cigarettes were missing from his shops.

This led to the appearance before Bulmer East Magistrates of two men who, the police said, had handled the treated packets. In the first case a 65-year-old pensioner, of Huntington Road, York, pleaded “guilty” to stealing two packets of cigarettes and a table cloth from his employer, Mr John Moor, at his store in Osbaldwick.

He asked for four other offences to be considered and was given a conditional discharge. Sgt. D Whitehead said that Det-Con Richardson had marked some packets of cigarettes with a chemical powder and placed them on display in the store.

On March 24 the shop manageress reported some cigarettes missing and Detectives Richardson and Fox examined the defendant’s hands and clothing with an ultra-violet lamp.

The test showed that he had handled the missing cigarettes. In an alleged statement the defendant said: “I had been tempted a few times with working near the stuff and being a pensioner.”


25 years ago

The hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic was allowing more ultra-violet radiation to filter down to ground level as it grew in size, said the National Science Foundation in the United States.

Two scientists of the University of Chicago had found through measurements that the ozone hole appeared to let in more of the radiation the larger it got.

This was the first finding linking a substantial increase in ultra-violet radiation on the ground to the ozone hole above the Antarctic. The ozone hole worried scientists because the layer filtered out most ultra-violet light.

Man-made chemicals including chlorofluorocarbons, used in refrigerators and some aerosols, had been banned for destroying the ozone layer.