25 YEARS AGO

THE great Sunday soccer boom is coming to an end - for the time being. The League announced today that no more Sunday matches will be allowed after a week tomorrow except for four already sanctioned. The Sunday matches were allowed only because of the power crisis, whose restrictions are expected to be lifted soon. After an early rush of enthusiasm, there has been a tapering off of crowds.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, March 17, 1949

SIR,- Women have borne the pains of childbirth for untold centuries, and nothing has been done to alleviate them on a national scale. The present Government is apparently failing in its duty to the community because analgesia looks like being co-ordinated into the National Health Service, and it may take as long to get this benefit as it takes to extract a tooth (one month), or produce a pair of spectacles (six months). Yours, etc., J.P.

125 YEARS AGO

HIGH heels for ladies' use are, as most of our readers are doubtless aware, no new thing. They were introduced under the name of 'chopines' in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 'By'r lady', Hamlet says to one of the lady actors in his play before the King of Denmark, 'your ladyship is nearer heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine!' This fashion also came from Italy, and Coryate reports that in his time the chopine was so common that no-one could go without it. 'It is a thing made of wood', he says, 'and covered with leather of sundry colours, some white, some red, some yellow. Many of them are curiously painted; some also of them I have seen fairly gilt. There are many of these chopines of a great height, even half a yard high; and by how much the nobler a woman is, by so much higher are her chopines. All their gentlewomen, and most of their wives and widows that are of any wealth, are assisted and supported either by men or women, when they walk abroad, to the end that they may not fall'.

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