100 years ago

Mrs Christian Hemmick, a Washington suffragette, had written a suffragists’ drama which would soon be produced.

The play showed that by the year 2013 skirts would be discarded, and that both sexes would wear Oriental trousers. Kissing would be unknown, and a rule compelling health certificates before marriage would be operative.

But who, it was asked, would want to kiss a modern suffragette? The man who would want to marry one of the violent brigade would seem to need a certificate of sanity rather than of health.

 

50 years ago

How long was the "average" life of a tea or dinner service? A great deal, of course, depended on the type of family using it.

Families of adults, unless there was a particularly "ham-handed" member among the people on the washing-up roster, would go for months, and even years, without one minor crockery disaster. Some families with children sometimes did not even go for a week without some sort of smash-up; and their tea-services were often "harlequin patterned" without any definite intention of being so - just a colourful mixed bag of oddments, made up from the wrecks of several services which originally were matched.

Choosing exactly the right set for your own dining table was not always easy. Each pattern was originally designed to decorate a table on its own, and it sometimes needed an experienced eye to divorce an unusual pattern from its cluttered surroundings in a heavily stocked china department.

 

25 years ago

Heavyweight hero Jamie Reeves had beaten an ancient weightlifting feat at John Smith's Tadcaster Brewery.

The burly 22st Yorkshireman, boasting 20in biceps, used a harness to lift three casks of beer, weighing a total of 1852lb. That was 16lb more than the 1836lb lifted by a London publican Thomas Topham in 1741, a record which had not been bettered since that date.

Strongmen from all over Britain - including the number one man of muscle Geoff Capes - had taken centre stage at the brewery to compete for the new John Smith's Strong Ale Trial of Strength title. Six finalists heaved and grunted their way through a series of events, from lifting metal beer barrels to hoisting a 112lb hop-sack 50ft into the air.

The most difficult challenge was the truck pull, with each competitor trying to heave an eight-ton lorry along a 30-metre course. Mr Reeves, a blacksmith and welder from Sheffield, came top with 28 points. Geoff Capes decided against an attempt on the old Topham record.