Saturday, August 14, 2004

100 years ago: Passengers in saloon corridor carriages were all right, but those in the ordinary carriages were anxiously awaiting Berwick to be reached after a run from Dundee without an opportunity of leaving the train. The reader was asked to judge the agony and misery these hapless people had to endure for nearly two hours until they reached Newcastle, through "the positive cruelty of the NER officials at Berwick" for refusing to allow the train to stop in the station, despite constant appeals as the engines changed. North British handing the train over to the North Eastern officials 45 minutes late "was no excuse for the latter venting their indignation on the helpless suffering passengers by running the train on at once without drawing up for five minutes at the platform".

50 years ago: An interesting feature of a show at York's Empire Theatre this week was provided by a member of the company, 22-year-old Annette Gay. Instead of having her ears pierced she set a new fashion with having her nose pierced, and during the show wore a nose clip worth £250, using a smaller one for daytime wear.

25 years ago: High winds battered York, leaving a trail of wreckage in their wake. York City Council's Parks Department had a record number of calls, 20 in four hours, to clear up branches, and even whole trees that had been uprooted. Several areas were without electricity, as power lines had been brought down, and some of the 42-knot gusts had blown cars off the roads in the area.

Updated: 08:45 Monday, August 16, 2004