25 YEARS AGO

YACHTSMAN David Whitaker had a phone call at his Bolton home from a stranger with an American accent. The stranger wants 27-years-old David to sail an £8,000 racing yacht across the Atlantic. Their conversation led to David, of Junction Road, Bolton, and four other young men giving up their jobs to embark on a story-book adventure. Next week they will set sail from Cornwall in the yacht they will deliver, all being well, 6,000 miles away in Houston, Texas. David's shipmates will be David Fletcher, whose parents live in Chorley New Road, Bolton, Martin Kippax, also of Chorley New Road, Christopher Mowat, of the Greenings, Edgworth, and Rod Thompson from Leicester.

50 YEARS AGO

SIR,- Some years ago with Allen Clarke (Teddy Ashton) I attended a meeting at Heywood of the Lancashire Authors' Association. A headmaster gave an address in praise of the dialect, and congratulated the Association on its efforts to preserve the old folk speech of Lancashire. At question-time, a member of the audience asked the lecturer why dialect was discouraged in school. The headmaster's reply was brief but emphatic: 'Because it is a great, you could say, a fatal handicap in after-life.' The days of the 'Hindle Wakes', when the millowner could talk broad 'Lanky' with his workpeople are over. Whether for better or worse is a matter of opinion, and the films and stage should stop their caricaturing of the Lancashire of today. Yours, etc., A.J. Winder, 26 Barrie Way, Bolton.

125 YEARS AGO

THE boat usually leaving Belfast at night for Fleetwood, and due at the latter place about seven o'clock in the morning, left the former port on Wednesday night. In the Channel she encountered a terrible head wind, and was utterly unable to make her port. Her coal being exhausted, it was thought advisable to run her into Whitehaven, where she arrived safely, and landed her passengers at ten o'clock on Thursday morning.

ON Wednesday night, Mr T. Smith, of the Bean Sheaf Inn, between Malton and Pickering, along with Mr John Day, stonemason, of Kirby Misperton, went out to shoot wild ducks. In returning Mr Smith took his gun to pieces, and put the barrel in his pocket. By some accident one of the barrels exploded and shot him in the abdomen. He died the same night.

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