100 years ago

Some details had been reported regarding the recent accident to Zeppelin L8, which had come down at Tirlemont and had to be dismantled for repairs.

In the evening two Zeppelins had appeared above Tirlemont.

The motors of one of them were evidently out of order as sharp explosions could be heard coming from the airship.

L8 was about to land on a field and flying low her cars smashed off the tops of seven poplars.

A few metres above ground one of the cars broke off and dived deep into the clayey soil.

The airship was smashed in half, and as the balloonets at both ends were still intact the dirigible assumed the shape of a capital V.

Seventeen of the crew of 42 were killed and buried the same morning near the place where the airship had landed.

The machinery of the Zeppelin was completely destroyed, and the dirigible was at once dismantled. Her silk covering and aluminium framework were sent to Germany.


50 years ago

A message had gone out from the House of Commons which, after interpretation from political parlance into the language of the “pop” era, meant that the British Army was getting with it - haircut wise!

The nation’s politicians were in the final stages of a debate on the Army Estimates when Mr George Reynolds, Defence Under Secretary (Army), announced the end of an era.

The military crop had had its day.

The Government was to review Queen’s Regulations over Army haircuts.

They would still have to be tidy but it had been decided to bring the whole matter of hair-cuts into line with modern practice, was Mr Reynolds’ way of saying it.


25 years ago

North Yorkshire rail travellers would be able to reach London from York 10 minutes quicker from the spring.

At an average speed of 100mph, the fastest trip would take just 113 minutes.

The new fast time for the scheduled service was just the latest in a string of landmarks for the 188-mile York to London run.

The earliest trains between the two cities 150 years before had taken a gruelling nine hours.

More than five hours had been cut off the time by the end of the 1800’s, and, in 1932, the Flying Scotsman completed the journey in three hours, 29 minutes.

Just six years later, the world’s fastest steam train, the Mallard, did the trip in two hours 37 minutes - a time that could only be improved on by seven minutes when the early diesels came into operation nearly 30 years ago.

The age of the InterCity 125s reduced the journey to 2 hours, five minutes in 1978, but now improvements along the line had made it possible to break the two-hour barrier.