25 YEARS AGO From the Evening News, June 3, 1976

IT had to be. Coronation Street, queen of soap operas has at last crowned the printed page. "Early Days", a paperback book stamped with the unforgettable picture of hair-netted Ena Sharples and her cronies Minnie and Martha in the snug of the Rovers has gone into its third printing -- and it hasn't even been on the bookshop shelves yet. Wholesale orders have broken all records, and the booksellers are now awaiting a selling bonanza which will erupt on publication day, June 10.

THERE has been a significant drop in the number of church weddings over the past few years, says the Vicar of Bolton, the Venerable HO Fielding. "It has been suggested that cost is the reason. But I cannot accept this because a register office wedding costs the same," he says.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, June 4, 1951

SIR - In a well-patronized snack bar near Moss Bank Way, I noticed recently that customers were treated in anything but a friendly fashion. A small girl was reprimanded because she hadn't exactly the right money for an ice-cream. The wife-assistant glared so much at a young man that he almost left without finishing his ice. And when she went to serve a customer in an adjoining room, she brusquely brushed past another waiting customer, leaving him staring after her in disgust. Perhaps some day we shall get a little pre-war civility. Humanist.

GOOD news awaiting Mr Bill Ridding on his return from Bolton Wanderers' tour of the Continent was that the two gold medals lost from his home at Kingwood-ave., Heaton, had been restored. The medals had been reported believed stolen. They are trainer's medals, awarded for the England v Ireland international, and the Football League v Scottish League match.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, June 3, 1876

AMERICA is just now a centre of interest, and Englishmen are flocking thither in large numbers.

Bolton has felt the impulse, and certainly a larger number of our townsmen, and residents from neighbouring districts, will visit America this summer than ever did so in any previous year.

Crossing the Atlantic has not lost all its terrors, but it is not by any means so dreadful an ordeal as it once was.

Thanks to superior steamships with improved accommodation and increased comforts, the pains and penalties of the voyage have been considerably lightened, and the prospect of ten days, more or less, "on the ocean wave" can now be regarded with pleasurable anticipations.

The facilities for going, too, are worthy of note. Intending voyagers - whether tourists or emigrants - have not now to make a preliminary journey to Liverpool for the purpose of making inquiries and arrangements; they have merely to call at once of the offices of one of the local agents for the shipping companies, from whom they can obtain all needful information, be supplied with saloon and other tickets, and secure their berths from the plan, obtaining the same privileges and terms as at Liverpool; then they merely have to leave home a few hours before the vessel departs, and at once proceed on deck.