FROM this newspaper 150 years ago. - Mr Hope's annual ball took place in the Assembly Rooms at Middlesbrough Town Hall on Monday evening last, which was largely attended.

Mr Hope's celebrity is only equalled by his excellence as a professor of the polite art, and he exemplified his finished execution and exquisite style in the "fairy" movements of his numerous pupils, whose elegant appearance, graceful deportment, and ease and precision of step, were the subject of unbounded admiration, and gave the highest gratification to their parents and friends, who comprised many of the principal families in the town and neighbourhood.

From this newspaper 100 years ago. - An accident which might have had serious results was caused by a small dog overturning a lighted paraffin light at the residence of Mr W Birchall, Cross Rows, Chilton Lane, Ferryhill on Saturday night.

The table cloth and window curtains immediately caught fire and also the clothes of an infant.

With much presence of mind the family took prompt and proper means to save the child and to distinguish the fire.

The little one miraculously escaped injury and very little damage resulted to anything but the articles already mentioned.

From this newspaper 50 years ago. - For a week a black-faced mountain lamb had crouched on a narrow ledge 60 feet up the side of a disused quarry at Cowshill, Weardale.

On Saturday, after risking their lives hanging by ropes over the edge of the quarry, PC Edmund Mann and Insp John Liversedge of the RSPCA brought the animal to safety after a nerve-wracking operation lasting nearly two hours.

In charge of the operation was RSPCA Chief Insp AH Baxter.

From this newspaper 25 years ago. - In 1950 the supermarket had not really hit the UK, but by 1960 the country was already looking towards superstores.

In 1970 they had arrived and the next ten years produced a series of high street wars which came simultaneously with roaring food price inflation. If it had not been for this competition, the housewife would have been paying a great deal more for ever-increasingly expensive groceries.

Some of the events in the last three decades were predicted, although the fuel crisis was one forecast that many were not willing to accept. In America today it is still not believed, in much the same way that many of us in Europe want to appreciate the results of technology which will hit us in the next ten years and which will change the way we live and shop.

The Eighties will be the decade of the microchip, the laser, the code-marked product, plastic money, bigger stores, heavier price cutting, high unemployment and social disorder.