May 2 (From York Press)

May 2

7:00am Wednesday 2nd May 2012 in Way we were

100 years ago

As the 10.35am from Pickering to Scarborough had been leaving Sawdon Station the previous day a valuable bay horse, which had been standing in the charge of a youth in the station yard, startled by the noise of the engine, dashed through an open gate and galloped on to the line directly in front of the moving train.

Fortunately the engine-driver saw the occurrence, and at once stopped the train, but the efforts of the firemen to secure the animal were unavailing.

The animal galloped away towards Wykeham, followed by the passenger train.

After running about 2 miles it stopped to rest, and another effort was made by the enginemen to secure it by a more strategical movement.

This time their efforts were successful, and the horse was led into a field and tied up to a gate to await the arrival of the owner.

Fortunately the line was a single one, so that danger from an oncoming train was averted. A delay of some minutes was caused to the passengers, who watched the proceedings with excitement from the carriage windows.

50 years ago

Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh took a coach trip through the Dutch bulbfields with other Royal guests attending the Silver Wedding celebrations of Queen Juliana of Holland and Prince Bernhard.

As part of their plan to keep the arrangements informal, the Dutch Royal couple used three comfortable tourist coaches to take the party through the bulbfields of Lisse to the growers' “shop window,” the flower-carpeted Keukenhof.

This - originally intended as a commercial “show garden” - was a beautiful park, with tree-lined walks and daffodil and tulip-covered “hills” bulldozed into shape from Holland's flat countryside.

25 years ago

The microchip age was coming to York's tax offices with the changeover to a computer system to handle the pay as you earn tax affairs of local employees.

The change at the city's two tax offices was part of a national programme to computerise PAYE nationally.

Their terminals would be linked to the main computer at the regional processing centre in Faverdale, near Darlington.

“The computer will do time-consuming calculations more quickly and accurately than we can do at present, leaving staff free to devote more time to dealing with matters requiring their personal judgement and attention,” said York tax inspector, Mr John Caldwell.

Although the service was designed to help deal with public inquiries more promptly, Mr Caldwell warned this would not happen overnight.

“The job of getting some 90,000 tax payers' records on to the computer will take a large part of our time over the next three months or so.”