NEWTON'S LAW: ALL THINGS SEEM TO CHANGE BUT PEACE IS A TRICKY BUSINESS

A colleague told me his nephew was born on the day fighting began in the Persian Gulf War. He wondered if the infant would one day look back at a newspaper for his date of birth and be amazed by the monumental events that took place.

It's an interesting thought. Obviously, Jan. 16, 1991, will be etched on a lot of American minds. To those who fought and their loved ones left behind, the day will carry a Pearl Harbor-type remembrance.

Depending on how these events are recorded in history books, however, the war might not be as relevant to, say, those celebrating their 20th birthday on Jan. 16, 2011.

It struck me that I had never been curious about the events of my own birthday. It was 1956 so I've carried the vague notion nothing much was going on. I decided to check.

I was born on a Saturday, the day before Easter. The Southeast Missourian's top story that day was a head-on collision on the Diversion Channel Bridge on Highway 61 south of Cape Girardeau. Four people were killed, including a New Madrid businessman of some note.

According to another Page One piece, 40 years of plans were still in motion for the development of a scenic parkway to run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. It was to be known as the Great River Road.

The 50-member University of Notre Dame concert was spending the night at the Marquette Hotel. The ensemble rehearsed at the Knights of Columbus Hall before making its way south for an Easter concert in Wynne, Ark.

Rehearsals were under way for the Cape Girardeau Community Theatre's spring melodrama, "Gold in the Hills, or The Dead Sister's Secret."

In New York, Grace Kelly was awarded the Treasury Department Medal for her contributions in promoting U.S. Savings Bonds. She was to leave the following Wednesday for Monaco, where she would marry Prince Ranier.

At spring training in St. Petersburg, Cardinal Manager Fred Hutchinson was wondering if "string-bean" first baseman Tom Alston "would live up to his $100,000 price tag." (The wondering must have been short-lived.)

Back in Cape Girardeau, moviegoers had a wide range of holiday viewing. The Broadway Theater was showing Bing Crosby and Donald O'Connor in "Anything Goes," the Rialto was showing James Stewart in "The Far Country" on the same bill with "Ma and Pa Kettle At Waikiki," and the Palace featured Glenn Ford and Barbara Stanwyck in "The Violent Men," promoted as a "story of violent men and their women."

In a pre-Easter editorial, the Missourian wrote, "Man in his evolution has thoroughly worked the material side of the street and will not be a whole being until he has developed his character and fed his soul." (They didn't see the 1980s coming.)

And there was this: The Soviet Union accepted the general terms of President Eisenhower's "open skies" aerial inspection plan and had proposed a three-month arms freeze to be followed by all-around cuts in conventional arms and armies.

Cinema has changed, first basemen have come and gone, and downtown hotels have closed their doors. Still, we work on this business of war and peace.

On any given day, 11,150 or so Americans are born. On Jan. 16, 1991, Southeast Missouri Hospital brought into this life Brandon Richard Steffens, Trenton Yorke Horman and Casey Elizabeth Bell. Let us hope they can look back on these times from a world of peace.