100 years ago

At the Patents Office Library in London, liquid soap had been introduced to thwart thieves.

For some time the officials had been troubled by the frequent abstraction from the lavatory of the establishment of the tablets of soap.

The new liquid soap apparatus would put a stop to this. The soap was placed in two green ball-shaped bottles, suspended on a pivot from fixtures on the wall, and all a person had to do to obtain a wash was to turn the bottle down and pour the soap into the palm of the hand.

A similar experiment some years before at the Royal Station Hotel, Hull, had been sealed with doom by a misunderstanding. Whether it was with a similar object or to demonstrate in a new form the up-to-dateness of the hotel was unsure, but liquid soap had been provided in handy bottles, and might have proved a great success.

A distinguished visitor, however, mistook the bottles of soap for hair-wash, provided by a beneficent railway company, and used it with the result that could better be imagined than described.

50 years ago

Mrs Sherri Finkbine, aged 30, the American woman who feared her unborn baby would be deformed because she had taken thalidomide in pregnancy, had been given permission to have a legal abortion by the Swedish State Medical Board in Stockholm.

Mrs Finkbine wept on hearing the news, said friends who revealed the decision of the board. The Medical Board’s Abortion Bureau consisted of a gynaecologist, a sociologist, a psychiatrist and an expert on questions concerning heredity. The board granted the abortion on the grounds that Mrs Finkbine was likely to have a mental breakdown if she was forced to bear a child that she feared was deformed.

The decision meant that Mrs Finkbine could enter a Swedish hospital for an operation whenever she liked, and she was expected to do so immediately. She had been unable to have a legal abortion in her home state of Arizona.

25 years ago

Seventy thousand “wannabes” made Roundhay Park, Leeds, their headquarters as That Girl kicked off her European tour.

Most of those who came to worship at the shrine of Madonna were not disappointed. The superstar sang, pouted, danced and strutted with consummate professionalism. She exuded enough sex appeal to fell a charging rhinoceros – and she probably picked up around a million pounds for a 90-minute performance.

She also displayed the cynical and high-handed attitude for which she was rapidly becoming notorious.