Thursday, June 10, 2004

100 years ago: For the second time in a week Scarborough established a record for being a sunny resort, as it had nearly fifteen-and-a-half hours of sunshine, against four hours at Brighton, eight-and-a-half at Keswick, and seven hours at Ryde. The day was the finest experienced this year and the prospect for the weekend was a bright one.

50 years ago: York was preparing some of the visual displays for the city's festival, and probably the biggest single contribution which would delight the tourists was the mass of flowers, which were being displayed in city centre streets. The parks superintendent began his job of supervising the distribution of hundreds of geraniums, ivy geraniums, marguerites, petunias, trailing lobelia, anthericum and salvia, a job which would be completed well before the festival. The flowers would fill the window boxes at the Mansion House, in St Leonard's Place, and other civic buildings. A total of 150 hanging baskets, many of which had been used at the Mansion House and St Helen's Square, gave the city a Continental appearance. No extra money had been allocated for the provision of this display for the festival and the plants had been grown locally in the nurseries at Fulford and Mill Mount.

25 years ago: North Yorkshire County Council had good and bad news for members of York City Council's Development Services Committee. They awarded the city £30,000 for repairs to roads damaged by frost the previous winter, then cut back local expenditure by £21,000, which would delay road improvements in Skeldergate, Clementhorpe and St James Street.

Updated: 16:25 Friday, June 11, 2004