Friday, May 21, 2004

100 years ago: The remains of Oliver Cromwell, which, like the head of his Royal contemporary, were continually "cropping up", would seem to be buried not in Kent, after all, but in Yorkshire. The true guardian of the Lord Protector's remains, according to a London writer, was Sir George Wombwell, one of the last survivors of the Death or Glory Boys who rode in the Balaclava Charge. Walled up in his famous old home, Newburgh Priory, in a sarcophagus hidden in a dark staircase was all that is left of Cromwell, according to an authority on the Protector, Mr Frederic Harrison. Sir George Wombwell was descended from Lady Fauconbridge, Cromwell's daughter, the story being that she secured the body of her father at the Restoration, and had it secretly conveyed to her home, and buried it in Newburgh Priory, renowned as the finest Cromwell Museum in England.

50 years ago: Telegraph poles had a fascination for bored railway travellers, who were often seized with an urge to count them or judge the speed of the train by the frequency with which they flashed past the compartment windows. In 1843, when trains and stage coaches were, so to speak, running side by side, Bradshaw's famous railway guide provided a table showing the traveller how, by observing and measuring the time taken between each quarter-mile post, he could ascertain the speed of the train. A copy of this guide had surfaced at British Railways NE Region offices in York, and had been used to write an article in the current edition of their magazine. The compiler must have assumed there would be a remarkable advance in the performance of the steam locomotive, for the table catered for speeds up to 400mph, the average speed of a train in those days being about the 20mph mark.

10 years ago: York firms Nestle Rowntree and Terry's were suffering at the hands of lookalike products, according to local MP Hugh Bayley. He claimed that the chocolate companies were losing millions of pounds of business to own brand and copy products, designed to look similar to originals like Chocolate Orange or Kit Kat. Mr Bayley said: "Thousands of people in York earn their living working for Nestle Rowntree and Terry's, and their jobs are threatened by the copycat pirates." The MP had called for lookalike products to be outlawed, and tabled an amendment to the Trademarks Bill, but Trade President Michael Heseltine said he would not making any changes to ban the copycats.

Updated: 11:07 Friday, May 21, 2004