100 years ago

“WE are ready.” In these words one of his Majesty’s Ministers had referred to the current condition of the forces of the Crown, and the various services on which their efficiency would depend in the event of war.

“We are united.” This statement had been made by another statesman. The party leaders had sunk their differences over domestic affairs, and it could be said with complete assurance that the whole nation - and indeed the Empire - presented a united front. The House of Commons had taken a very solemn step in suspending domestic controversy in order that this country might present a united front to the world.

The Prime Minister, in asking the House not to proceed with the Home Rule Amending Bill, declared that this was a time of gravity almost unparalleled in the experience of anyone. The course which he recommended the House to take was without precedent, at any rate for a century. The only possible parallel in modern times was the rally of Whigs and Tories to the common standard on the escape of Napoleon from Elba.

 

50 years ago

THE US spacecraft Ranger VII had crashed on to the moon’s Sea of Clouds at nearly 5000 miles an hour after radioing back a stream of pictures that opened a new era in astronomy. The six television cameras in the speeding spacecraft’s nose turned on to full power just 13 minutes and 40 seconds before the scheduled impact on the moon.

Its predecessor, Ranger VI, had also made the 238,000 mile journey perfectly on course, but its cameras had failed at the crucial moment. The 4000 pictures expected to be relayed back to earth would be the first close-ups of the moon that men had ever seen. Those taken of the moon by a Russian spacecraft in 1959 had been snapped from a significant distance.

 

25 years ago

A FURORE had erupted in Poppleton over hush-hush county council plans to bulldoze the site of a Saxon settlement.

The council’s money-spinning development project, discovered when villagers obtained a leaked county hall document, had prompted a public meeting. Protesters, who had formed an action group, were furious at the proposals to build four luxury houses on the historic plot, an old orchard site which was part of a council-owned farm.

The property, Manor Farm at Nether Poppleton, had fallen empty when the previous tenant retired. The action group claimed the farm buildings and a Grade II listed tithe barn where Prince Rupert was thought to have sheltered his troops before the battle of Marston Moor was, it was feared, under threat.