25 YEARS AGO

THE Beatles partnership may not have enough money in the kitty to meet tax liabilities, counsel said in the High Court today. Paul McCartney was making his court bid to end the partnership and to preserve its assets. The judge was told by counsel for the defendants - John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Apple Corporation, Ltd. - that they needed three weeks to answer evidence put on behalf of Mr McCartney. 50 YEARS AGO

BLIND persons will be able to determine the colour of traffic lights and distances to within one foot of obstacles by the use of an "electric cane", the American Electronics Magazine discloses. The device projects a beam of light that is reflected by objects within a 20ft. radius. This reflection is detected by a photo-electric cell which creates tone signals in an earphone. 125 YEARS AGO

ABOUT half-past eleven o'clock last night, a singular calamity occurred to the proprietor of a marionette exhibition, whose name has not yet transpired. He was in the travelling van and had arrived, on his way through Bolton, to about 200 yards from the second toll-bar on Bury New-road, Breightmet, when the van was upset, fell on its side and immediately took fire almost close to the door. There were within the vehicle two men, a woman and a child, who with very great difficulty managed to escape from a fearful death, one of the men being severely burned in passing through the doorway. The van was burned to the wheels, and the horse would have inevitably shared the same fate had the animal not been released from the shafts by the exertions of Mr W.H. Bradley, house furnisher and auctioneer of this town, who resides near the bar.

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