100 years ago

The initial meeting of the Entertainments Committee of the York Corporation had been held in the Guildhall, when Alderman Forster-Todd was elected chairman.

No time had been lost by the committee, for a programme of band performances was submitted and adopted, commencing the following Monday evening with the Castle Howard Reformatory Boys' Band, who were to play on the Knavesmire. Other bands would be engaged in quick succession, and the committee also contemplated sandwiching in between the band performances several open-air vocal concerts.

50 years ago

Scarborough's now internationally-famous motor-cycle road race meeting was to be televised by ABC Television from the Oliver's Mount circuit on Saturday, June 16.

During the afternoon meeting, ABC was to screen three excerpts from the 21st annual Cock o’ the North racing, with commentaries by ex-TT winner Graham Walker.

In addition ex-Manx Grand Prix champion Denis Parkinson, of Wakefield would weigh-in with summaries. Dennis was the only rider to compete in the first 14 meetings on the Scarborough circuit, which was two miles 728 yards long on the Mount which dominated the East Coast resort. The event was organised by Scarborough and District Motor Club (which dated back to 1902), and there were more than 170 entries.

The three televised broadcasts would be spread throughout the day. Four ABC Television cameras had been sighted at strategic points to catch the highlights of the racing. One would be at the start and the others at Quarry Hill, Memorial Corner and Mount Side.

25 years ago

York-born test pilot Nigel Wood looked likely to lose the distinction of being the first Briton in space.

Squadron Leader Wood, aged 36, who lived in Hampshire, was chosen in 1984 to become Britain's first astronaut. He was intensively trained as a payload specialist to supervise the placing of the Skynet military communications satellite in orbit. But after the Challenger disaster in January 1986 in which seven astronauts died, the launch programme for Skynet was postponed.

That placed a question mark over Clifton-born Squadron Leader Wood's chances of a space flight. Now it had been announced that another Briton, 30-year-old Michael Foale, had been picked from more than 5000 hopefuls for training at the Johnson Space Centre in Texas.

An Astro-physicist, Mr Foale had been working as a payload specialist for the US space agency NASA for the previous five years. His father was a retired Air Commodore and his parents lived in Cambridge. But it was possible it would be a long time before he got into space.

The first shuttle mission since the Challenger disaster was likely to take place at the end of 1988 and would be manned only by experienced astronauts.