Dateline: AUGUST 1970

THE BIG STORY...

Vivian Nicholson, whose rags-to-riches story captivated thousands of ordinary Yorkshire folk after she won the pools in 1961, announced she was moving abroad.

The former council-house tenant, who scooped £152,319 with her second husband, Keith, was reported as saying at the time: "I'm going to spend, spend, spend!"

However, after Keith was killed in a car crash on the A1 in 1965, she and her three children – a fourth child lived with her first husband – decided to up sticks and move to Naxxar, Malta.

She said at the time: "The spend, spend thing has gone long ago.

"Now I want to make and save." She added: "Of course, I will have a lot of regrets leaving here. I'm not running away from anything, just hoping to start life afresh in completely new surroundings.

"Mind you, I'm going to miss the gossips, they really made life interesting."

A play was written about her story in 1977.


The Headlines...

Headingley, Saturday August 1, and Geoff Boycott, pictured below, hit 64 in the highest opening partnership of the Tests series between England and the 'Rest of the World', who had earlier declared 376 for nine... fast forward to August 4, however, and the Rest of the World won the fourth test and the series. Glum faces all round.

Mrs Miriam Hargrave, 62, of St Oswald Road, Lupset, passed her driving test at the 40th attempt – she had been given more than 300 lessons and estimated the cost to be about £250. At the time, she was a Guinness world record holder for most number of fails.

Furs and bedding worth £100,000 were destroyed in a fire at Haigh's and Bairstow Ltd, St John's Road, Huddersfield. Firefighters were forced to use water from Cambridge Road baths, 100 yards away, at the height of the blaze.

Bus driver Sandra Holt, 23, of Sowerby Bridge, brought public transport to a standstill after male drivers and conductors staged a lightning strike – because she was allowed to drive a bus. The matter led to a meeting where 54 men voted against her driving, opposed to 49 in favour.

W J Durkin laid the foundation stone to the new £100,000 British Legion Club in Mill Street, off March Lane, Leeds, to replace the one on Norfolk Street – it was due to be opened on July 1, 1971, 50 years after the creation of the legion.

Kevin Murphy, a 21-year-old journalist became the first person to swim across the British Channel and back again without stopping. He set off from Shakespeare Beach, Dover and arrived on a beach in Calais some 15 hours 25 minutes later. He swam back in 19 hours 25 minutes.

Woodhouse Lane multi-storey car park opened at a cost of £590,000. Built to accommodate 1,320 cars on 13 levels, it spanned the new inner ring road in Leeds. To begin with, the council employed five guard dogs and handlers to keep vandals and thieves away.

The Government resolved to allow council house tenants to buy their homes.

Leeds City Council approved plans to demolish Bramley town centre and replace it with a modern shopping scheme, including multi-storey office block, supermarket and 28 shops, bus terminal, pub and parking for 300 cars. Nowadays people bemoan the loss of the old town.

A rock fault movement in the Dales was blamed for an earth tremor which shook much of North England on Sunday August 9. West Yorkshire Police said the main force of the mini-earthquake was centered in Settle – a movement in the Craven Fault, described as a 'geological oddity', was proposed as the most probable cause.


The gossip...

Scotland Yard were investigating a threat to kidnap the wife of West Ham and England soccer star Bobby Moore. Detectives claimed to have foiled the kidnapping scheme and said five armed men wanted to demand a £10,000 ransom.

A firm "sacked" its computer after it kept getting workers' wages wrong – 4,000 workers at the BSA factory, Birmingham, threatened an impromptu strike, so managers announced they were going back to a manual system.


The world...

Some three million sheep were thought to have died in a severe drought in Australia, where the value of one individual animal had fallen to less than the price of an ice cream. Hundreds of farmers faced bankruptcy as a result of the prolonged hot weather.

Dockers went back to work after three weeks on strike at Hull docks. Some 2,830 men went back to work. Ports were chock-a-block with ships, many carrying perishable cargo such as fruit and meat.


and finally...

Lawrence Shaw, of Harehills Lane, Leeds, found a caterpillar of more than three inches in length while pruning a willow tree in his garden. He said: "When I first saw it I thought it was a snake."