From our archives:

85 years ago

Malton Urban Council had stopped taking a temporary supply of water from Norton, instead they had gone back to Lady Well, taking the extra precaution of chlorinating the supply first.

The action followed a report by the Medical Officer Dr Walker that the Norton supply had been contaminated by the recent floods.

A sample of the Norton water was now under analysis, and a report would be published as soon as any information was received.

In the meantime, the Council did not feel there was any cause for public alarm.

Seldom had an audience been carried away with the spirit of a play as was the case at the drama competitions of the Yorkshire County Federation of Women’s Institutes, at the Assembly Rooms, York.

Laughing heartily and enjoying themselves the Yorkshiremen enjoyed the broad Yorkshire dialect, the broader the better.

And a dramatic river rescue in which four people dived into the water to save an elderly man who had fallen off a barge on the River Ouse was witnessed several members of the public.

50 years ago

A driver and a motorman had been killed after a freight train ran into buffers at Hatfield, Herts, derailing a dozen bulk grain wagons.

All rail traffic had been told to pass the spot with caution, whilst British Rail planned for some trains to be diverted.

In York, Miss Sandra Jean Metcalfe, a Yorkshire county and captain of the Rowntree Swimming Club, was married to Mr John Ernest Brookes and former telecommunications technician at the Yorkshire Evening Press, Mr Jeffery William Milner, was married to Miss Lynda Maryse Clack.

York’s Co-operative Society announced it would close two of its chemists’ in the city.

A Society spokesman confirmed the news that the Bishopthorpe Road and Boroughbridge Road closures were simply an economical option.

20 years ago

Titanic star Kate Winslet’s North Yorkshire boyfriend had given her a gold ring for her wedding finger, but the couple were not about to get married according to his father Edward Threapleton, as the rings were just a sign of friendship.

And Russian President Boris Yeltsin had fired his prime minister and the entire Government in an announcement that followed weeks of bitter feuding in the Kremlin.

Yeltsin, in a television address to the nation, said Russia would continue with economic reform.