Friday, May 27, 2005

100 years ago

At a meeting of the City of London Court of Common Council, Streets Committee, schemes were submitted for lighting several of the streets with lamps of incandescent gas under high-pressure to replace the existing electric arc lamps. The proposals would lead to significant savings, as reverting to gas would be 50 per cent cheaper than electric light. The chairman said that during the last four or five years the side streets had been lighted on the incandescent gas system, with great satisfaction. He wished to emphasise that the proposals were experimental and that nothing further would be done to supersede electric lighting in the city for a year or two until it was seen how the proposed gas system worked. In his opinion, the best test of either gas or electric lighting was a man's own test, to ascertain how he could see with each, and he believed that, so far as street lighting was concerned, the electric light was a failure.

50 years ago

Joan Collins, another young British star who had gone to Hollywood to try her luck, seemed to be making the grade out there. After her starring role in "Our Girl Friday" Joan went to California for talks with a producer. The result was a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox. Joan had just completed her role as lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth (Bette Davis) in "Sir Walter Raleigh", and would have Ray Milland and Farley Granger as her leading men in her next assignment "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing". In this story, originally bought for Marilyn Monroe until she walked out on the studio, Joan would play Evelyn Lesbitt, a beautiful chorus girl who becomes involved in a scandalous murder case. She had already been given full Hollywood beauty treatment, and her trans-Atlantic transformation would be completed in this film, in which she had to adopt a broad American accent.

25 years ago

The estimated cost of converting York to a comprehensive school system, based on a sixth form college, was £5.9m. This was cheaper than the middle school proposals, estimated to cost £6.5m, which were rejected after public meetings in the City. Members of the North Yorkshire Schools sub-committee would be told this when they met in June. They would be told that the next steps to take were probably to examine in detail whether they should have a tertiary or a sixth-form college and where such a college should be cited. Then they would decide a pattern of 11-16 schools and how many to have.

Updated: 08:36 Friday, May 27, 2005