From our archives:

80 years ago

The new headquarters of the Lord Mayor’s Own Troop of Boy Scouts in Burton Lane, York, was opened by the Lord Mayor Alderman C T Hutchinson. The room which had been acquired for the troop was conveniently located at the rear of the new Clifton Cinema. The troop consisting of 22 cubs and 20 scouts were entertained at the event by Mr Foxton, Scoutmaster, with a series of games. In 1938, York was also promoting a new physical fitness campaign, organised by the Education Committee. According to the Board, “Bodily health could only be maintained and improved by systematic physical education, therefore there was a growing need for teachers to attend evening classes in physical fitness.” Training courses under the National Fitness movement were to begin on May 25. For the men the classes would be held in the gymnasium of Nunthorpe Secondary School, and for women the gymnasium of Mill Mount Secondary School. The classes would be free and run for an hour and half.

50 years ago

The last train from Elvington to Wheldrake on the Derwent Valley Light Railway Company’s line left Layerthorpe. The company was closing the two-mile stretch of track, and Wheldrake station because it had proved unremunerative. Top secret film of the 1943 trials of the Dambusters bomb was to be exclusively released for television in a special edition of All Our Yesterdays to mark the 25th anniversary of one of the war’s most sensational raids, the smashing of Germany’s Ruhr dams by Guy Gibson’s Lancaster’s on the night of May 16, 1943. For the programme, Granada had enlisted Dr Barnes Wallis, who had invented the bomb, to describe to Brian Inglis his own personal battles in getting the Government to back his scheme.

20 years ago

A children’s playground dedicated to the memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, had been targeted by vandals in an East Yorkshire town. Playground equipment had been urinated on, litter bins wrecked, and shrubs pulled up at the Snaith play area which was named after the princess because of her links with various children’s charities in York. And robbers had raided a York store armed with a baseball bat sparking police concerns over the safety of shop workers in the city. The raiders who had threatened a female store assistant and escaped with a quantity of cash from Viking Stores, Acomb, had left the woman “extremely distressed”.