From our archives:

85 years ago

The Archbishop of York had been asked to dedicate two new classrooms which had been added to Bishopthorpe Church School at a cost of £845.

With a few extra touches, such as a new cloak room and central heating, the school now ranked among the best around York.

The Japanese Warship Sawarabi had foundered, with 106 men of the crew still missing. Earlier reports had stated that the Sawarabi had been disabled in a storm off Formosa.

Three destroyers had hastened to the scene and succeeded in rescuing 14 of the crew, but rescue work was hampered by heavy seas.

York City Council had decided to create several new working schemes at a cost of £11,712, to help unemployed men find work.

The total of wholly unemployed was 605 more than the previous year, bringing it to a grand total of 4,500.

And plans for a greyhound racing track on the White House estate had once again been rejected by York’s Council officials.

50 years ago

A huge fire in York had gutted a one-room carpet cutting department, and raged through an adjoining furniture repository owned by Whitby Oliver’s.

The fire, at Bishophill, had caused thousands of pounds of damage, and involved rolls of carpet costing £6 a square yard.

York CID were investigating a well-timed theft in Micklegate, in which £500 was taken from a hotel safe.

The money was taken from an upstairs safe in the Crown Hotel, while customers in the bars below were preparing for a women’s darts match with a team from the Lord Nelson.

And customers of the Golden Lion in St Sampson’s Square, York, who’d had a full month of colour television on tap with their evening pint, found themselves being interviewed by the BBC for the radio programme Today.

20 years ago

York-born former Emmerdale heart-throb Ian Kelsey was set to star in the West End musical Grease.

Kelsey, who had left the farming soap earlier that year when his character Dave Glover was killed while rescuing his son, was due to take over the role of Danny at London’s Cambridge Theatre, replacing Luke Goss, one half of the 1980s pop group Bros.

Finance ministry officials accused opera star Luciano Pavarotti of not paying taxes on £3.6m of opera concert earnings. The singer denied the claims.