100 years ago

Prince Arthur of Connaught had opened at Newport, Monmouthshire, the new lock of the Alexandra (Newport and South Wales) Docks and Railway Company, and formally inaugurated a great dock extension.

Prince Arthur entered the lock, which was the largest in the world, from the Bristol Channel in Lord Tredegar’s steam yacht Liberty, and received addresses of welcome from the Newport Corporation and other public bodies.

The new entrance lock gave direct access from the Bristol Channel to the docks, and was 1000ft long and 100ft wide.

The pumping plant consisted of two vertical three-crank condensing engines of the marine type, the horse-power of which was 600 to 1200, according to speed.

The capacity of the pumps, which were among the largest of their kind in the United Kingdom was five million gallons an hour each, and they were currently used for pumping water from the River Usk into the dock in order to maintain a constant level.


50 years ago

An attempt to transplant a human heart would be made soon, it was stated in the annual report of the Medical Research Council for 1962-63.

Public interest in the surgical transplantation of various organs had been aroused as the result of some encouraging successes in kidney transplantation.

There had, however, also been some disappointing failures, and it was admitted that the procedure was still far from simple.

The report concerned itself chiefly with results obtained in homotransplants (from another individual of the same species) and said a few attempts had been made to transplant animal kidneys to man.

Interest in organ transplantation currently centred on the possibility of using homotransplants obtained either from living donors or from cadavers.

“So far,” said the report, “most of the work has been concerned with homotransplants of the kidney in selected patients with chronic renal failure, but there have been a few unsuccessful attempts to transplant the liver and the lung, and the transplantation of the heart will certainly be attempted soon.”


25 years ago

Pick-Your-Own punters had found plenty to put in their punnets this summer, and the hot, sunny weather had been a help rather than a hindrance.

It may have left strawberries and raspberries slightly less succulent than in years gone by, but it had brought pickers swarming to North Yorkshire’s fruit farms.

At Wheatlands Farm’s 16-acre holding at Poppleton Nurseries, Northfield Lane, farm manager Mr Ted Foster reported an average of 300 customers a day – coming to take advantage of prices such as 46p a pound for strawberries and 55p a pound for raspberries.