From our archives:

85 years ago

Mr E K Spiegelhalter, of Malton, had been made an honorary member of the council of the Institute of Ophthalmic Opticians. Only two members in England had received the honour since the foundation of the Institute in 1905, namely, Mr Spiegelhalter and Mr J H Cuff who had been the secretary for 19 years. Flood-lit piggeries, horses being groomed with vacuum cleaners, and codfish posing for head and shoulder camera portraits, were just some of the unusual things revealed during an exhibition of photography in agriculture and fisheries which opened at the Royal Photographic Society, Russell Square. All the latest developments in agricultural and fishing industries were also depicted in photographs and some shots had disclosed some of the most innermost secrets of the oyster. And the Prime Minister, Mr Baldwin and Sir John Simon were the principal guests at a luncheon given by the National Labour Committee in London, on the eve of the reassembly of Parliament.

50 years ago

Unsuspected by the hundreds of people who had seen the musical, Oklahoma! at Malton, one of the leading players, Terence Wright, of Sowerby Road, Acomb, York, was appearing nightly with a dislocated shoulder. Terence who had suspected he’d suffered an injury when he fell off his motor-cycle only a few days before the start of the show had cheerfully assured the producer, Bill Little, that it would not keep him out. His father was driving to Malton and back home to York each evening by car and along with other members of the cast helping him with costume changes. And French female flyer Herissa Pelissier had landed near Paris after flying round the world in just over 143 hours in a single-engine plane. Madame Pelissier, 37, married and with an eight-year-old son, left Toussus-Le-Noble airfield near Paris on September 12 on her 28,000-mile flight.

20 years ago

The sound of Santa’s sleigh bells had come early to a York shopping centre. The festive shopping season was getting into full swing at the Monks Cross shopping centre, despite it still being over a month before Christmas. According to the centre manager the date had been chosen for Santa’s visit to avoid clashing with other shopping dates in and around the city and the opening of the Naburn shopping centre. And chefs at an Indian restaurant near Malton were hoping to curry favour with their customers by attempting to bake the world’s biggest onion bhaji to celebrate National Curry Day.