From our archives:

80 years ago

The question of whether women should enter places of worship hatless had risen as a result of an announcement that a series of special services for cyclists and motorists would be held in York Minster over the coming months. Secretaries of cycling clubs were therefore invited to bring along female club members, but only in their ordinary cycling kit, as if they were in their Sunday best. Which meant the girls would be hatless and wearing shorts. And the first air raid precautions meeting in Wensleydale had been held in Leyburn’s Town Hall. Giving an address on the requirements for the district was Captain J Sewell, county air raids precautions officer from Northallerton, who in great detail had explained the probable methods of attack, and the unit system of precautions. Overall the meeting had been very fruitful with half of the attendees offering their services and the rest promising to give their help if needed.

50 years ago

American helicopter gunships flew in low over the capital, strafing Vietcong positions, as fierce street battles raged in Western Saigon. Government military and police spokesman reported more than 200 Vietcong dead in the gunship raids and ground strikes in the Phu Lam district alone. Trickles of refugees were now a familiar sight in the capital as they tried to move away from the battle areas. And two members of the staff of a boys’ preparatory school near York were married in the school chapel, believed to be the first wedding in the chapel since it was built in 1600. The bride, 21-year-old Miss Diane Broadbent, secretary to the headmaster of Red House School, Moor Monkton, married 21-year-old maths and science teacher Mr John Nicholls, just before scaffolding was erected around the chapel as part of a £6,500 restoration scheme.

20 years ago

The apparent crisis over the future of the Spice Girls deepened after an official statement confirming missing Geri Halliwell’s decision to quit the band was due to be released that weekend. And an eccentric train buff had left York’s National Railway Museum half a million pounds in his will. The money was part of ex-public schoolboy Charles Shorto’s £5 million fortune. Shorto a retired railway engineer, of East Budleigh in Devon, who had left public school to join the railways as a teenager and worked on them for 40 years.