November 25

Mr G Lee Temple had given an exhibition of upside-down flying at the Hendon Aerodrome.

He rose to a height of 4,500ft, then shut off his engine and dived vertically for about 1,000ft. He next flew upside-down for about five seconds.

When he tried to regain the normal position the machine did not readily respond, and he plunged some 900ft before righting the monoplane, after which he descended to the ground.

Mr Temple used his old Bleriot, which he flew from Paris to London, but he and his mechanics had altered it in accordance with the recommendations of M. Bleriot for all aviators who attempted the upside-down and looping-the-loop flights.

Mr Temple was the first Englishman to fly upside-down in England, but Mr Hucks had been the first British aviator to perform the feat. He had given several exhibitions in France.

50 years ago

Hair-raising. A red-hot coloured electric chair. That was the latest addition to the shop run by a barber of Pocklington.

“But don’t misunderstand me. It is just the thing,” said 49-year-old Harold Keye. He was busy at work giving another customer a trim.

“Ever since I got the chair more and more people have come to my shop. It is a big help,” he added.

The secret of his chair, one of the few in the country, was that a vacuum sucked away hair into a container as it was cut. That not only kept his shop clean. It also eliminated an occupational hazard.

Explained Mr Keye: “Mortality statistics indicate a high number of deaths through lung diseases in the hairdressing trade, possibly resulting from loose hair. So the chair helps to cut down the death risk.”

25 years ago

York faced a stark choice, according to a report which painted a gloomy picture of the city’s economy by the year 2000.

The choice was either more jobs which were lower-paid and unskilled, or fewer which were full-time, well-paid and highly skilled.

The report, by two York university lecturers and commissioned by the city council, predicted: “The decline of manufacturing in the city, such as British Rail Engineering, allied to the rise of the service sector, chiefly in tourism, would accelerate.

"Jobs were in danger of being taken out of York by firms with headquarters elsewhere. Women’s pay in service jobs would continue to deteriorate.

"The city centre would get more congested, and central site values and rents would soar, as tourist-related services expanded."

The council’s leader, Coun Rodney Hills, pledged that the authority would fight to prevent York from becoming a total service-sector economy inundated with jobs which would tend to be low-skilled and low-paid.