25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, May 20, 1973

SHIRMA Mislimov, a farmer in Persia, celebrated his 168th birthday today, according to a local newspaper. In support of his claim to be the world's oldest man, he says he rises early, works in his garden, and goes to bed just after 10pm. He has daily walks of more than half a mile. He says: 'I've been married three times. Of my 23 children, many were carried away by the storms of life and war. Only two are still alive. Mr wife is 107, full of pep, and looks after me carefully'. Because of the lack of documentary proof, Western scientists are sceptical of Mislimov's age.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, May 19, 1948

REMINDERS of the Bolton of a bygone day keep turning up. Does anyone, we wonder, remember the visit of a dancing bear to the town? A Bolton man, Mr Thomas Walsh, of Vincent-st., has handed us a lantern slide showing the bear, a massive fellow, being admired in the street by a number of children. His keeper, a rover from all appearances, stands proudly near the animal holding a huge thick staff and a slender length of rope which is fastened round its neck. Judging from the dresses of the children, knickerbockers, caps and loose-fitting jackets, and the cobblestone streets, the slide must have been made forty or fifty years ago. Although Bruin looks so good humoured, he was apparently not greatly trusted, for he is shown as being securely muzzled with strong-looking leather and a chain.

125 YEARS AGO

ON Monday, the neighbourhood of Old Hall-street, Kearsley, was kept in a state of great ferment, excitement, and fear, by the vagaries of a madman. From inquiries we learn that a young man living with his mother, brother, and sister, in Old Hall-street - the mother being bedridden - was seized with a fit of madness whilst following his occupation as a spindle turner at the works of Mr Cooke, Kearsley. He used violence to his employer and to the workmen, and was with difficulty removed home. At home he was seized with repeated paroxysms of madness, more or less violent, until the climax was reached in the afternoon, when seizing hold of a hatchet he commenced to demolish the furniture in the house. He severely cut his sister with the instrument, then rushed upstairs in the front room, the window of which he chopped out. After the greatest terror had been excited, a ladder was procured to make an entry by the window, but the men looking on were rendered nerveless by the madman chopping away at the top of the ladder, and swearing most fearfully that he would split the skulls of any who dared ascend the ladder. Mr Sergeant Robinson, of the Farnworth police, appeared on the scene. He went through the kitchen of the house into the back place, and there at the top of the stairs he saw the madman dancing round the top of them and brandishing the hatchet. Sergeant Robinson seized hold of a sweeping brush, and essayed to knock the hatchet out of the madman's hand, but was unable to effect that purpose through the brushhead coming off. He then challenged the man to come downstairs and he would fight him. The challenge was accepted, and, with hatchet in hand, the man rushed down the stairs. He struck out most determinedly at the officer, by the latter stepping aside, and the handle of the weapon being rendered slippery by the blood upon it, from the man's own injuries chiefly, it flew out of his hands. Sergeant Robinson, embracing the fortunate turn of the fight, rushed on the man and pinned him securely in a corner. Assistance then coming, he was conveyed out of the house to the police station - no less than eight men being required for that purpose - and in the evening, having cooled down from sheer exhaustion, he was lodged temporarily in the lunatic ward at the Workhouse.

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