100 years ago

At the Harrogate Borough Court the Mayor said the magistrates had received an intimation from a reliable source, that a certain amount of unnecessary “treating” was taking place in the shape of hospitality to the Belgian refugees and the Belgian wounded soldiers.

It was very undesirable that this undue treating should take place, because they did not know what it might lead to.

He wished to caution and ask those people who thought themselves kind by so doing, not to do it.

It had quite an opposite effect and it would save a great amount of trouble to those who occupied the position of manager and to those who had charge of the soldiers and refugees and who wished to conduct their houses as they used to do.
 

50 years ago

Since about 1930 the only adults to be frightened by monsters had been Abbot and Costello.

So what sort of audience reaction were the Hammer people looking for with a double bill like The Gorgon and The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb, at the ABC cinema this week? The answer surely, was laughter.

These pictures had got to be judged as comedies. As anything else they were pretty pathetic.

They were not even original, the latter was the one about the mummy coming back to life to kill off the people who desecrated its tomb; the former was the one about Peter Cushing.

And artistically they were pretty dull - compared, anyway, with the beautiful work produced in the horror genre by Riccardo Freda (The Terror of Dr Hitchcock) and Roger Corman.
 

25 years ago

East Germany had thrown open its borders to the West.

The historic move had started a jubilant flow of thousands of people, who popped champagne corks, cheered and danced as they filled central West Berlin. Others danced on top of the Berlin Wall. The wild delirious party continued well into the early hours.

Horns honked, people cheered and thousands of West Berliners joined the East Germans in the city's biggest celebration for decades. A small number of East Germans travelled into West Germany at some of the 10 other border crossings between the two countries.

After thousands of East Berliners had streamed into the western half of the city, closed to most of them for almost 30 years, East German radio announced that they would be required to get a visa for such trips from 8am local time.

Hours after East Germany had opened the Berlin Wall, built in 1961 to keep the two Berlins apart, tens of thousands of East and West Berliners reunited in a raucous outpouring of joy.