1846: The first official baseball game is played between the New Yorks and the Knickerbockers at Hoboken NJ. 1885: The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York from Paris. 1910: Father's day is instituted by Mrs John Bruce Dodd of Spokane, Washington. 1...

Sir: The French Ambassador, Jean Gueguinou, (Another View; "Nuclear tests are safe", 16 June) makes a poor case on behalf of a country with a reputation for logical thought. How does the independence and defence of France depend on the safety and rel...

With the assembled company I discussed a recent conversation with the playwright Brian Behan, when he said it behoves us all to encourage persons of the paramilitary persuasion to write books. "Once they start writing books they are on their way out....

Such a viewpoint would be missing the point. For a well-constructed problem can equal the beauty, and far exceed the purity, of anything one may find in a game. You just need to make the effort not only to solve it but to understand what the composer...

The appointment last week of Louise Woolcock and Pauline Clare as, respectively, the school captain of Rugby and the Chief Constable of Lancashire are just the latest examples of the trend. By this I do not of course mean that there is a trend for wo...

Sir: I would like to address a number of points, of both accuracy and substance, which are raised in Rosie Waterhouse's article "Crying wolf puts more kids at risk" (15 June). 1. By using the term "sexual interference" the NSPCC is drawing attention ...

Sir: The recently announced decision by France that it will conduct further nuclear tests in the Pacific is contemptible. As my own small protest I have decided that I shall no longer buy any French wines, but shall rather, as a gesture of solidarity...

(past tense) A nostalgia for past events or situations the unpleasantness of which you have forgotten. As in "Wasn't it wonderful to see old Maggie on Frost the other day. At least she was a real leader", or "Of course we were poor - my mum drank, my...

Linford Christie, one of the greatest sportsmen Britain has produced, announced his retirement, claiming that neither the British media nor the author of his unauthorised biography had treated him or his achievements with the respect they deserved. W...

But this is what the public relationers adviser, Patrick Robertson, appears to have achieved. He sent a fax, as he thought, to Jonathan Aitken's private secretary. This was received by a certain David Scholefield. The next day Mr Scholefield received...

and Dr P. Bracken Sir: We should be grateful to Mind, Marjorie Wallace and others for highlighting the issues surrounding the use and abuse of drugs used in psychiatry (Letters, 12 and 13 June). Such drugs have been prescribed widely for nearly four ...

I'm sorry. We've just noticed that her letter is in fact headed "Midgets", not "Widgets". So no prize there, I'm afraid. "Only an absolute idget, could find any use for a widget," says Luela Palmer. "A widget," says Paul Clark, "can be combined with ...

Unfortunately it is likely to be a vain hope. Although 68 per cent of Bavarians said in an opinion poll they would like their monarchy to be restored, the German constitution forbids them from campaigning for this. Donald Foreman The Monarchist Leagu...

Daniel Chatterton, London N1

Carol Godsmark Chichester, W Sussex

The Samoans played with courage if not total conviction but there were a couple of strangely out-of-character high tackles against the South African scrum-half, Joost van der Westhuizen. The next day I read in your paper that it is alleged that he ha...

Concealed by the whites and the ANC alike is the huge falsification of SA's history of racial settlement, entrenched in law in the 1950s, to pretend that blacks had no historical or property rights in 86 per cent of South Africa when in fact they fir...

There is a significant burden associated with disposing of the supermarket carton (refuse collection, landfill sites etc). However, the cost of this is not borne by the supermarket but by the taxpayer. This means that we are subsidising the supermark...

The concept of the sale of council houses to sitting tenants could only succeed as a piece of social engineering if the majority of sitting tenants on any given estate bought their properties. This did not happen. As a result, an ex-council house is ...

Not everyone is taken by the Irish style of dance, but to dismiss it in such snide and pejorative tones is to fail to recognise the dis-cipline, art and beauty involved. D A O'Dwyer Bedford

Geoffrey Elkan London NW11

John Major, talking to German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, when his voice was picked up by a rogue microphone at the G7 summit in Canada She can't expect to have our respect when she's not in the 1st XV. Joseph Martin, pupil at Rugby School, about the ap...

n IF, AS I pass along my way, I can give a little hand-up here and there, I do. And today I want to help Peter Stothard, editor of the Times, a cheap newspaper. Some time ago I noted that Peter was having something of an identity crisis, in that peop...

There are still British people who assume that the experience of Communism in eastern and central Europe was of unmitigated tyranny, that all were victims except for the Party bureaucrats and the secret policemen. Today, in 1995, when democracy has r...

All these things have occurred, he is convinced, because of his knowledge that in the late 1980s the Government acquiesced in the sale of British weaponry to Iran and Iraq, nodding through such embargo-busting deals as the sale of naval guns to Iran ...

She certainly presented a most alarming spectacle when she made an appearance before Sir David Frost, who took the precaution of falling sound asleep. Her smile bore no relation to what she or Sir David was saying. Her teeth seemed to have been speci...

As a devout Anglican (godfather, indeed, to Mr Jonathan Aitken) and a keen Scout (I always wear my shorts and Backwoodsman badge to the Cenotaph) I feel I have earned my right to speak out. Who will rid me of these meddling dolts? Deep breath, Wallac...