From our archives:

85 years ago

Malton’s oldest Nonconformist church announced that it had hired a woman minister, the Rev Rosamond H Barker. The Unitarian Church, which dated back to 1715, had decided to take the unusual step after the present pastor had retired on the account of increasing age. A native of Lancashire, Rev Barker had just completed her training at the Unitarian College, Manchester. The Theatre Royal, York, was under new management and planned to open its doors with the full West End company of “The Chocolate Soldier,” the famous comic opera. With a star-studded cast which included Yorkshire lass Anne Croft, the first ever musical comedy actress-manager, theatre-goers in York were in for a real treat. And tense excitement prevailed in Baghdad where bands of Arab tribesmen had been assembling throughout the day in readiness for the funeral of King Feisal. In Haifa, 15,000 frenzied Arabs had battled their way to touch the coffin as it was dispatched from a cruiser.

50 years ago

Saturday afternoon shoppers had a dramatic time after dozens of policemen herded them from the Woolworth’s store in Spurriergate, after an anonymous phone call had stated that a bomb had been planted behind one of the counters. The call was made to the police mid-afternoon; and within minutes policemen had rushed to the store and evacuated about 600 shoppers. The police then went back in with the shop girls and made a foot-by-foot search of the premises. Nothing was found, and it was business as usual within 30 minutes. And York City had certainly left it late to gain their second win of the season at Bootham Crescent. With only 55 seconds to spare, Ted MacDougall had cracked in the winning goal, giving City a 2-1 victory over Scunthorpe United.

20 years ago

A schoolgirl from York had shown she was a class above the rest after one of her drawings was picked for the cover of a national magazine. Roseanna Young, of Huntington School, had beaten hundreds of entries in the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ competition to design a front cover for the society’s junior magazine, Wingbeat. And impotence sufferers in the region would have to wait weeks or months before they knew if the performance-enhancing drug Viagra would be available on the NHS.