Our photo archives contain a goldmine of images recording events both great and small in Tayside, Fife and beyond.
In our new weekly series, Gayle Ritchie brings you 10 photos that were in the news exactly 10 years ago…
1. Past and present staff of Dundee magazine My Weekly gathered to celebrate the publication’s 100th birthday. More than 150 people attended the bash at city nightclub Liquid to mark the milestone. Pictured are the My Weekly team with (centre, cutting the cake) Fiona Brown and Sally Hampton.
2. Angus the cat was caught red-handed, or should that be red-pawed, laundering not money but tiny chicks. Owner Helen Galloway from St Andrews didn’t get in a flap when the two collared dove chicks were found sitting, petrified but otherwise mostly unharmed, in the middle of her laundry basket. The picture shows Angus with Helen and her husband Tom Ashton.
3. Jockey Phil Kinsella rode Brooklyn Brownie to victory in the Festival Chase at Perth racecourse. The 10-1 shot charged home by 14 lengths.
4. St Andrews Castle was the setting for a staging of Once Upon a Time, performed by a cast mainly made up of local children. The production, featuring some well-known characters from fairy tales, was part of the On the Rocks student arts festival. Pictured are some of those who took part.
5. In the wake of the harshest winter for decades, Alex Salmond said elderly Scots should never again be forced into making the agonising choice between “heating and eating.” The former SNP leader promised pensioners “a fair deal” during a trip to Perth. The picture shows Mr Salmond meeting Ashley O’Connor and niece Mia Hamilton in Perth High Street.
6. Some of the Queen’s first portrait sittings were released to mark her 84th birthday. The 56 photographs of Princess Elizabeth, most of which belonged to the late Queen Mother, went on display to the public at Windsor Castle. They were taken by Marcus Adams, who pioneered a relaxed, informal style while chronicling two generations of royal children between 1926 and 1956.
7. On April 20, 2010, a methane explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon Rig caused it to catch fire and sink, spilling 4.9m barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, around 40 miles from the Louisiana coastline. Eleven workers died and 17 others were injured in what became one of the largest environmental disasters in US history. The impact on marine life was devastating.
8. Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen marked the official opening of their brand new state of the art Junior School with the launch of 600 balloons from the quadrangle at Schoolhill.
9. Flights were grounded as a vast ash cloud from the eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull paralysed the airline industry. The eruption began on April 14, with volcanic ash hurled several kilometres into the atmosphere. Northerly winds then blew this dense plume toward Europe and the busiest airspace in the world. Over the next six days, hundreds of thousands of flights were cancelled. Additional localised disruption continued into May 2010.
10. American civil rights activist Dorothy Height died in Washington D.C. at the age of 98. Born in Richmond, Virginia, Height specifically focused on the issues of African-American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness.
