From our archives:

85 years ago

Owing to the depression in agriculture and lack of support, Scalby show, had been reduced to a flower, vegetable and country produce exhibition.

However there was still an excellent attendance and the weather was gloriously fine, a contrast to the rainy day experienced the previous year.

The BBC had announced that Mr John L Baird, the inventor, would be introduced to listeners as a preliminary to the first television transmission from Broadcasting House.

The first programme in a new series of television broadcasts was planned to be a varied mix of comediennes, singers and conjuring acts.

The British airman Mr J A Mollison had successfully completed the first solo flight across the Atlantic from east to west.

When told of his wife’s joy in his success, he said: "I am glad I justified her confidence in me.”

50 years ago

There was tremendous activity on Knavesmire as a small army of backroom boys and women made the final preparations for York’s richest racing feast of the season, the three-day Ebor meeting.

One additional task for the technicians this time was the installation and checking of the television sets which were to provide closed circuit TV, in colour to all enclosures.

Another “first” that year from ideas man Major Leslie Petch was tractor-drawn “trams” to carry racegoers to and from the car parks.

All 33 occupants of an East Yorkshire Motor Services coach had been taken to Northampton General Hospital in a fleet of ambulances after the coach had left the M1 motorway and plunged down a 30-foot embankment near Collingtree.

And for the first time that year the bells of York Minster had been rung for Saturday’s Evensong by a party of 15 visiting bell ringers from Farnworth in Lancashire.

20 years ago

There was no mistaking that Oasis’s new album, Be Here Now, had been released as scores of people queued outside the HMV on Coney Street at 8am. with the new single blasting out to all of York.

The world’s media may have been obsessed with her every move, but Princess Diana was completely ignored by passers-by as she jogged to her car in west London.

And the hunt was on in Ryedale by the Pickering Dramatic Club who desperately needed a crystal ball as a prop for their latest show Noel Coward’s Blythe Spirit.