From our archives:

85 years ago

A dashboard “gadget” which hands the driver of a motor-car a lighted cigarette was among several devices on show at a New York exhibition.

The device consisting of a black box, held out a packet of cigarettes allowing the driver to smoke at the simple touch of a button.

There was also an arrangement by which the butt may be stamped out, without the danger of live ashes blowing back into the driver’s eyes.

Pending the recommendations of a special sub-committee it was success all round for the pedestrians and shopkeepers of Coney Street.

All applications and notices were now in order to commence with the new one-way traffic system.

And York Fire Brigade received an unusual call that “Flames were rising out of the pavement” in Fishergate.

Dispatching a fire engine and several men, it was found that the flames were coming from a road grate near a shop, where the proprietor had poured paraffin, which had then been accidently ignited by a match or cigarette end.

50 years ago

One of the biggest trees in Britain was being sought by engineers doing emergency repair work to York Minster.

The tree had to be oak and measure at least 48ft in length and 18-inch square to replace one of the 550-year-old beams in the roof of the Central Tower which had been attacked by death watch beetles.

Inquires were being made in the trade to try find a tree of adequate length and certainly of English Oak, as it was more fire resistant than steel.

Donald Duck mechanical Disney figures sold in York had been recalled due to the use of poisonous lead paint.

The toys made in Hongkong had been part of a batch of 36 assorted figures.

And a two-year-old German Rottweiler named Tor had been named top dog in the York Canine Safety Training School “passing-out” obedience test.

20 years ago

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott had savaged a Labour MP who had branded some of his new women colleagues in the Commons as Stepford Wives with a “chip inserted into their brain to keep them on message.”

Mr Prescott said the comments by Brian Sedgemore were “deplorable” and muttered that, if the MP was making remarks like that “they’d have great difficulty finding Brian’s brain.”

And the Prince of Wales was in Nepal on the second stage of his three-nation tour.