25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, April 25, 1972

FILM star George Sanders was found dead in a hotel at Castelldefels, Spain, today.

A SIX-point plan to speed up the release of land for house-building has been announced. The drive will be directed against both public bodies and private owners who are hoarding land and so helping to force up prices for new homes.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, April 25, 1947

SIR,- You published a speech by Mr Tanner (President, AEU), in which he urged that the rate for the job be paid to female engineering workers, remarking that the latter are entitled to this if 'Princess Elizabeth is worth £15,000 - the rate for the job'.

I suggest that the last phrase is a cheap and unworthy jibe at Her Royal Highness, and is entirely and utterly irrelevant to the question he was speaking upon; and that to bring any member of the royal family into a matter of industrial bargaining is entirely unworthy of a man of Mr Tanner's reputation. The royal house is outside the orbit of these industrial matters.- Yours, etc., Thomas Barnes, 2 St. Ann-st., Bolton.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, April 25, 1872

ON Wednesday afternoon a severe thunderstorm passed over Adlington, doing considerable damage to a cottage and to St. Joseph's Catholic Chapel, Anderton. The cottage is situated in the yard of the Adlington Gas Company's Works and occupied by Mr Seth Bentham and his family. The electric fluid appears to have struck the chimney, entered a bedroom, and passed out by the upper portion of the window, one pane of glass being smashed. Portions of the wall have been displaced. At St Joseph's Catholic Chapel, the electric fluid struck the stone cross on top of the chapel at the west end, hurling larger blocks of stone to the ground and on to the adjoining buildings in which about twelve masons &c. had taken shelter. When the crash came, a stone weighing about two hundred-weight fell upon the roof, penetrated the slates, and hung suspended above the heads of the men by a broken spar. The cross and saddle-stone, weighing about five hundred weight, fell through the roof of the entrance porch to the chapel, close behind the outer doors.

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