From our archives:

85 years ago

Porters had descended into the vaults of the bank of England to collect a total weight of 144 tons of gold bars all “earmarked” for the united states.

The payment of £19,000,000 which was due on December 15, was all part of a settlement agreement to pay off Britain’s War debt.

Claims of railway companies adjusting further wage concessions, had been challenged by railwaymen during a meeting in Darlington, in celebration of its diamond jubilee of the Darlington No 1 branch of the NUR.

According to Mr James Wilson, of the NUR headquarters, the company had been paying out £25 million to their shareholders and over the past ten years railway shareholders had received £400 million in dividends.

And York County Hospital Supporters’ Club had decided to present to the Hospital with an all-electric wireless set, thanks to the financial success of a dance held during York Races.

50 years ago

King Constantine had appealed to the people of Greece to follow him in efforts to restore democracy and freedom.

The King’s appeal came by shortwave radio from Larissa, site of a large base in Central Greece, shortly after reports that the Third Armoured Corps in Salonika had rebelled against a seven-month-old military regime.

Mrs Dorothy Phillips, poet and dramatist, had left the sum of £1671,165 in her will.

For more than 40 years Mrs Phillips had been a prolific writer of plays and poems, particularly widely read in Yorkshire thanks to her interest of life in the Dales.

Among her bequests she had left £25,000 to RNLI to purchase a lifeboat for the Yorkshire coast to be named Lord Brotherton, in memory of her late uncle-in-law.

And in the charts that week there was a severe lack of Christmas songs as the Beatles took the number one spot with Hello Goodbye.

20 years ago

DNA tests had confirmed that Paula Yates was the daughter of the late TV presenter Hughie Green.

The grieving celebrity, recently hit by the death of her lover, Michael Hutchence, now had to come to terms with the fact that her father Jess Yates, was not the man she thought he was.

And Pocklington School-educated playwright Tom Stoppard, was knighted by the Princess of Wales at Buckingham Palace just minutes before comedy writer and actress Victoria Wood received her OBE.