THE INNER Distribution Road, or IDR, was under construction in the autumn of 1969 at a cost of £2.5 million-but the section between Castle Street and Southampton Street was not scheduled to be completed for another two years.

When finished,this section left the town with a bizarre ‘flyover to nowhere’ for many years that had all the appearance of a ski ramp.

The new 50p coin was introduced to replace the old ‘ten bob note’ as the UK entered the decimal age-it had seven smooth (non-milled) sides and a new design of Britannia on the reverse and the Decimal Currency Board announced that an initial 120 million would be released.

A good Samaritan saved the life of a driver parking her Morris Minor car in Yield Hall car park 51 years ago.

As Yvonne Brooks stopped her engine stalled and she heard “a pop” and a passer-by quickly grabbed her door shouting “Get out, it’s on fire!”-as she jumped from the vehicle the fire took hold in seconds and quickly engulfed the bonnet and rapidly spread to the entire car.

Reading’s Head Post Office in Friar Street was installing the latest mechanised equipment in an effort to speed up the sorting of both letters and parcels.

Using two new devices ‘The Segregator’ (letter and package separator) and ‘Automatic letter facer’ (sorting 1st and 2nd class) more than 20,000 items could be processed every hour.

Staff at the sorting centre were the first in the UK to pioneer this new system and another 30 similar ‘super-sorting centres’ were due to be set up by the early 1970s.

Reading Football Club was making history by signing Jamaican-born Art Welch as the first player to come over from the United States league.

The 24-year-old winger agreed to sign for the club and play on the wing and many Royals fans were looking forward to seeing Tom Jenkins and Welch ‘bombing’ down both wings as both players had reputations as ‘crowd pleasers’.

A flashpoint during Reading’s match against Walsall involved a defender appearing to handle the ball to prevent a Royals’ goal.

It was not until the Reading Chronicle published its own photo that the goalmouth incident mystery was solved-it clearly showed that the defender had his hand on the ball.