From our archives:

85 years ago

A cloud of flies, 200 yards long and three yards wide, surprised visitors on Scarborough Marine Drive.

No one knew where the flies came from, or where they went, but some of the millions of buzzing insects did not get beyond Scarborough, for a motor car which ran into the crowd accounted for several thousands.

The fear of polluting drinking water by an extension of the sewer from what was known as the old sewage farm to the new sewage farm at Kirk Hammerton had become the latest topic of conversation at the meeting of the great Ouseburn Rural Council.

And in London 55 miles of streets in the City of Westminster including Pall Mall, Whitehall and Regent Street, were to be lit by gas lamps until 1947.

The present contract had lapsed and a new one had just been awarded to the Gas Light and Coke Company.

50 years ago

Sir John Dunnington-Jefferson, one of Yorkshire’s leading agriculturists officially opened Easingwold’s new £50,000 agricultural centre.

The new centre was the second of three centres to be built in the North Riding area providing part-time day-release courses for young men and women employed on farms and in the agricultural engineering industry.

After hearing people grumbling because most of the top soil and the feeds from some of the larger fields had been blown by spring winds into the next parish, Mr Dunnington was reported as having said “that it was their fault for grubbing up the hedges which their ancestors had planted for the express purpose of mitigating soil erosion”.

Pictured in The Press were children from Sherburn Church of England School, recreating the knighting of Sir Francis Drake.

20 years ago

A York hairdresser was hoping his fingers had the Midas touch, as he put the finishing touches to Shirley Bassey’s hair.

John Higgins, of the Daniel James Salon on Grape Lane, had been hand-picked by the Goldfinger songstress to keep her hair in tip-top condition when she took to the stage in front of 14,000 revellers in the stately grounds of Castle Howard.

A hundred pupils from Westfield Infant School, Acomb, took part in the magical tale of Cinderella as a farewell celebration before they moved on to junior school.

Pictured was seven year-old Dominique Angell as Cinderella along with two ugly sisters.