THE ARCHIVES

100 years ago The House of Commons last night went into Committee of Supply on the Civil Service estimates. On the vote of £17,015,780 for salaries and expenses of the Board of Education, Mr H. Fraser said the total national expenditure on education was more than £40,000,000 a year. He said this expenditure was more than an investment; it was an insurance. Nobody could pretend to doubt the very real effect which our system of popular education has had on the improvement of morals, taste and skills. 50 years ago Well-tanned David Wood, a deckhand on the 18,000-ton tanker Amastra, which was sabotaged last week in Vietnam, is safely back home in Arbroath. David, only son of Mr and Mrs Alexander Wood, was one of 36 British crew members flown home by the company, Shell Tankers (UK) Ltd after the incident. A limpet mine blew a hole measuring about six feet by four feet in the hull of the tanker about 12 feet from the fully-occupied cabins. No one was hurt, but David lost all of his belongings.

25 years ago

Blairgowrie is to launch a bid to stage the Gaelic music and verse festival, the National Mod, in 1995. The town is up against a number of rival campaigns and the tourist committee are keen to attract the gathering after witnessing the success of last year’s event in Dingwall. People in the Ross and Cromarty town have expressed delight at the spin-offs from the Mod and now Blairgowrie wants to give visitor numbers a boost. Around 1,000 competitors and spectators take part.

One year ago

Dundee is at the forefront of an ambitious bid to transform the nation’s health by finding a preventative treatment for childhood diabetes. A trial to test the impact of a commonly prescribed diabetes medicine on children at risk of the disease was launched. A total of 6,400 families with children aged five to 16 with a family history of Type 1 diabetes will be invited for a blood test to determine whether they are at high risk of developing the condition and, if so, they will be invited to take part in the study.