Local newspapers are fantastic resources for family history but am I alone in finding it's terribly easy to get side-tracked while trawling them for family info? While it's obviously a good thing to learn more about local history and the environment our ancestors lived in, this means I never get to achieve half of what I set out to do on any one day in the archives...

I suppose my gripe here is really lack of time, not the fact of being easily side-tracked.

I was looking through the Kilmarnock Herald for obituaries of several members of my Cuthbertson/Wark family who died within the space of a few weeks in 1883 and happened upon the following report, which made me smile:

"Strange Freaks by Sheep

On Wednesday afternoon while three tups and some lambs belonging to Mr Thomas Paton, flesher, Portland Street, were being driven to the slaughterhouse, the foremost of the three tups bolted and leaped through the glass door of Messrs R C Robertson & Son, painters, the other two following suit. The glass door was smashed to pieces, and the wonder is that more damage was not done as various valuable mirrors were in the shop and quite unprotected. The sheep were little the worse of their adventure, their large horns protecting them."

In a 1911 edition of the same newspaper I found a promotional article for a product called Zam-Buk. Headed "Prostrated by Itching Piles - Zam-Buk Ends A Wife's Torture", it featured Mrs Margaret Finniemore, a washerwoman from Plymouth, telling how an operation to cure her piles had seemed the only hope until she discovered "this grand balm", which took the pain and itching away. Did Mrs Finniemore actually exist, I wonder? Her address was given in the article as 101 Tavistock Place.

Has anyone else got any quirky news items or ads to share?