THE ARCHIVES

100 years ago

A conference of representatives from Dundee, Arbroath, Brechin and Forfar District Committees, held in Arbroath, had under consideration the question of the adoption of a scheme for housing of the working classes. Reports were submitted showing that there were 845 empty houses in the county. Between Arbroath and Dundee there were nearly 400 empty houses. Of these, a percentage were in a good condition. before going into a scheme for new houses, they might consider repairs where the walls were good.

50 years ago

Two skiers – one of them seriously injured after falling 800 feet down an ice-face in Glenshee – were flown to Riverside Airstrip, Dundee, by a RAF helicopter. The more seriously injured, 16-yearold Douglas Reid, a millworker of Peterculter, sustained a head injury. He had stopped to light a cigarette on the 3,000-foot Cairnwell when he slipped on the ice and into a boulder-strewn gully. The other man, Merchant Navy officer Michael Geddes, 27, had gone to the assistance of Douglas and slid about 300 feet.

25 years ago

Ronnie danced to Hava Nagila and then kissed his friend Eytan Porat on the mouth. That was when police knew they had recovered the parrot given by former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin to an Israeli military adviser in 1961, said Porat, the bird’s caretaker. Porat reported Ronnie the parrot missing five months ago. Every Saturday he visited the parrot market in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan to see if he could spot Ronnie. Last Saturday he finally did. Police were sceptical until Ronnie started to dance.

One year ago

A Tayside woman was stabbed, decapitated and then dismembered by a woman who had broken into her South African home. Sandra Malcolm, 74, was shown no mercy by Sheree Prince even though she had treated the housebreaker’s burned foot and given her tea and toast. Prince, 22, broke into Mrs Malcolm’s home in Cape Town in April 2015 by climbing through an open window. Mrs Malcolm was woken by the noise but helped Prince when she saw her injured leg. But Prince launched a frenzied attack on Mrs Malcolm in order to stop her calling the police.