100 years ago

Schoolboy howlers were always entertaining. Here were a few selected from a number which would be published in the Students’ Column in the “Yorkshire Weekly Herald” at the weekend:

“An elephant is a square animal having a leg at each corner and a tail at each end.”

“The Derby is where the Midland trains run to. They start from St Pankhurst’s in London.”

“Gravity is chiefly noticeable in autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.”

“John Bright was a man who invented an incurable disease.”

To these we could add the following extremely interesting note received by a class teacher from the parent of a pupil: “Kindly excuse Tommy being absent yesterday as he was taken to the hospital for his eyes, and I am pleased to state the doctors say that in six months’ time he will be able to do without them altogether.”

 

50 years ago

The keynote of organisations like the York Gild of Freemen was integrity, said the Lord Mayor of York, Councillor Stanley Palphramand, after his installation as president for the coming year at the annual meeting of the Gild in the City Council Chamber. And, he added, it was a virtue which was as vitally necessary today as it ever was in the past.

The Lord Mayor said he was not a Freeman, or even a native of the city, but he had lived in York for 30 years, which he thought was long enough for him to claim to be a native by adoption.

Councillor Palphramand took over the office from the previous year’s Lord Mayor Alderman Archibald Kirk. In a short address Alderman Kirk, said: “I do envy you people who are qualified to become Freemen of a city such as York. It must be a wonderful thing, and I would say after my experience of being Lord Mayor of the city that I think the next highest honour that can come to anyone is to be a Freeman.”

He urged the Gild to continue its efforts to enrol as many people as possible into its membership.

 

25 years ago

A packed York Minster had heard American evangelist Billy Graham preach the gospel via satellite from Earls Court, London. It was the first of six meetings to be transmitted live each evening during the week to more than 230 venues throughout the British Isles including York, Northallerton, Leeds and Hull.

The 70-year-old evangelist, whose first British crusade had taken place in 1946, had addressed six mass meetings at West Ham football stadium and Crystal Palace athletics stadium earlier in the month.

His mission ‘89 crusade had been such a success he had decided to extend it by holding an extra meeting at Wembley on July 8.