25 Years Ago

May 5, 1978

A TRAIN load of people from Cumbria went to London on Saturday to join protestors in an anti-Windscale demonstration.

Mrs Janet Acland, co-ordinator for Friends of the Earth in South Lakeland, said the trip went very well and over 380 people joined the train which started at Carlisle and called at Penrith, Oxenholme, Lancaster and Preston.

About 10,000 people took part in the protest over the proposed expansion of nuclear fuel reprocessing at the west coast atomic plant.

50 Years Ago

May 2, 1953

THE Mint is striking off millions more shillings because gas and electricity meters have turned over from pennies to shillings in the slot.

100 Years Ago

May 2, 1903

THE King has taken Italy on his way through the Mediterranean, and at Rome has had such a reception as it will be impossible to excel, even in Paris.

The Romans are more than enthusiastic, and King Edward has been acclaimed among them as fervently as if they were Londoners. They have not forgotten the sympathy with which Englishmen supported Italy throughout her long struggle for unity, nor the ovation to Garibaldi, nor the honour to Victor Emmanuel I, so warmly bestowed when those heroes of liberation visited our shores.

Besides which, no doubt, the King is popular on his own account; and has been exercising the gift he has for saying happy things, or things which exhibit his own character in a happy light. One of the happiest was his remark to the Italian premier: "Our two countries have a great principle in common liberty, and a great object peace." One of the least expected must have been his sentence in the Pantheon, where Italians lay their dead Kings: "So noble a resting place makes one in love with death."

Altogether the King's visit to Rome has evidently been a great pleasure to himself, and has certainly given pleasure to two nations. Italians and Englishmen have apparently very little in common; perhaps that is one reason why the bond of amity between them is so strong, and is so seldom subjected to the strains and accidents which dog our relations with Germany, France and Russia. Jealousy as between Italy and England is a sentiment unknown.

150 Years Ago

April 30, 1853

THE letter carriers of Kendal desire to present their grateful acknowledgements to the gentlemen who have just presented them with new suits of livery.

May 1, 2003 13:30