From our archive:

85 years ago

Germany was in the midst of the most extraordinary election campaign in the short but chequered history of the German Republic.

It was an extraordinary election, because it was entirely needless and meaningless, the men who had staged the event had openly declared if they did not get a majority they would act as if not only the election had never taken place, but as if the Reichstag did not exist at all.

In Pickering a Sanitary Inspector had reported a case of overcrowding at Marishes, where eight persons were sleeping in two bedrooms.

The Medical Officer at the inspection had deemed this as “too many” and also stated that there had been two cases of scarlet fever in the area.

There was a fall in the prices of eggs at Selby market due to a large supply and poor demand.

50 years ago

A Chicago-Miami airliner, with 109 people aboard, was hijacked by a man in a white Stetson hat who grabbed a pretty air hostess and forced the pilot to fly on to Havana, Cuba.

The Cuban authorities released the big DC8 of Delta Airlines, after providing the dazed passengers with lemonade, coffee and pictures of Fidel Castro.

Back at their desks after five weeks in France, 16 pupils at a York secondary school were believed to have succeeded in a new experiment in education.

The students from the Joseph Rowntree Secondary School, New Earswick, were the first secondary students in the York area to have spent part of a working term in a French school.

Lulu, Britain’s 19-year-old top pop singer, presented her fashion collection called the Lulu Look by Lenbry and Yorkshire Television were looking for actors and actresses to star in a thriller series of half-hour colour films, set during the 1914-18 war, to be made for the new company’s children’s programmes.

20 years ago

People in Selby had put themselves in a twist after their local shop put up a notice asking for the return of a missing pair of knickers.

The notice read: “Lost one pair of ladies great knickers. Of great sentimental value-one very upset owner.”

And a contest designed to give Yorkshire’s brewing capital a slice of the action in the pie world had been officially launched.

Recipes were now being investigated for a Tadcaster Pie, which combined steak from locally reared beef herds and ale brewed right here in Tadcaster.