ARGUS ARCHIVE: Newport County told to pay £126k debts 'or fold'

A remarkable escape from death was reported off Hartland Point when a Newport cutter was in collision with a steamer. The two men on board were rescued and their cutter was eventually washed ashore at Westward Ho!

A brave Blackwood youth was to be honoured by the King after rescuing a lad who had fallen in front of an oncoming train at Pontypool Road Railway Station.

The safe at the stationmaster’s office at Marshfield Station was blown open overnight and more than £4 in cash taken. All the office windows were blown out in the explosion.

The paper learned that 25 acres of land had been earmarked as a prime site for another steelworks to be built in the town to rival the existing one of Messrs Lysaght.

50 YEARS AGO

A police car raced through Newport’s crowded streets to answer an alarm at the National Westminster Bank, Commercial Street only to find that it was the second false alarm at the premises in two days.

Local Welsh authorities were urged by the Wales committee of the Industrial Training Council, to devise means of increasing their intake of apprentices.

Members of the Monmouthshire Federation of Schoolmasters selected five schools: Blackwood; Brynhyfryd, Llanhilleth; Croesyceiliog; Graig, Bassaleg and Pontymister for their school meals boycott.

Members of the Monmouthshire Hunt gathered to watch Lieutenant-Colonel Harry Llewellyn rename the old refreshment rooms at Nantyderry as The Foxhunter Inn.

25 YEARS AGO

Newport County were given a ‘pay up or fold’ warning after it was revealed that the club chairman was stalling over wiping out the club’s £126,145 debts.

The battle to save the maternity unit at County Hospital, Griffithstown was lost as Welsh secretary Peter Walker announced that he was axing the service.

According to a leaked internal memo controversial waste disposal firm Re-Chem consistently exceeded waste disposal limits when discharging waste chemicals into the sewage system.

Patients waiting for operations were being turned away from the Royal Gwent Hospital because of operating theatre staff shortages. Eighty patients in one week failed to be admitted for their operations.

ON THIS DAY AROUND THE WORLD:

1986: US space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after take-off, killing seven astronauts.

1953: Derek Bentley, 19, was hanged at Wandsworth Prison, despite public protests. Bentley and Christopher Craig, 16, had been found guilty of murdering a policeman, but Craig escaped the gallows because of his age.

1896: Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent becomes the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined one shilling, plus costs, for speeding at eight mph (13 km/h), thus exceeding the contemporary speed limit of two mph.

814: Death of Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor.

1547: Henry VIII died at Richmond, in a room reeking of the stench from his leg ulcers.

 

1807: London's Pall Mall was the first street in any city in the world to be lit by gaslight.
1829: Body-snatcher William Burke was hanged in front of a huge crowd.
1908: The London Playhouse Theatre opened.
1932: The Japanese occupied Shanghai, start of a full-scale invasion of China.
1935: Iceland became the first country to legalise abortion.

1993: The IRA bombed Harrods for the third time in 20 years. Four people were injured.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: The routes of high-speed rail links to cities in the north of England were unveiled, in a move Prime Minister David Cameron said would boost Britain's stagnant economy.