From the Evening News, May 3, 1972

A PROTEST against the imminent closure of Shipgates to pedestrians was made at last night's Council meeting by Labour leader Ald Harry Lucas. He said that the footway from Bradshawgate to Mealhouse Lane had been a public right of way for several hundreds of years. He suggested that closure should be deferred and talks held with Tillotson's Newspapers, Ltd. (publishers of the Bolton Evening News) in an attempt to maintain a pedestrian way. But Town Council leader Ald Edwin Taylor said that closure had been agreed in 1967 when the Corporation received from Tillotson's Newspapers land which now formed part of the Arndale Shopping Precinct. 'This promise has got to be kept', he said. 50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, May 3, 1947

IN The Ballroom: The statement in this column recently that a new dance called the Princess Valse, written in honour of Princess Elizabeth's 21st birthday, was being taught in Bolton, prompted some correspondents to send in a 'correction'. They said the dance was called The Royal Minuet.

Well, we're both right. I find there are two sequence dances written specially for the Princess's birthday, named as above. Both are entirely different dances. The steps in The Royal Minuet were written by Miss Adele England (who wrote the Lambeth Walk), and for the Princess Valtz by a Whitley Bay man.

Mr and Mrs F. Fletcher, captains of the Bolton Palais dance team, reached the quarter-finals of the Star All-Britain amateur championship in London last week.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, May 3, 1872

THE ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS

Every day fresh details arrive of the Vesuvius eruption, and the dreadful accidents which it has occasioned. The half of the Convent of St Dominico Maggiore are put at the disposal of the fugitives, and are filled by six hundred women and children. It is feared that two professors of the medical college at Naples have perished. An heroic act is recorded of the soldiers. The lava had surrounded several persons, seeing which the soldiers first threw sand and then stones onto the burning torrent and thus made an impromptu bridge by which they were able to save those in peril.

On Tuesday word came from the Observatory that the internal rumbling of the volcano had almost ceased; inflammeable projectiles were still thrown forth, but no so high. The earthquakes were still as numerous as ever, but not so violent. The eruption is nearly ended.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.