Out of the past 1/13/11

25 years ago: Jan. 13, 1986

The Mississippi River remains closed to traffic in a three-mile stretch north of Cairo, Ill., due to a barge accident yesterday that resulted in the sinking of one of 15 coal-laden barges; Coast Guard officials are determining if there is sufficient room in the channel to allow barge traffic to resume.

Missouri Department of Conservation workers, who responded to 18 brush fires last week, yesterday responded to a fire which burned 18 acres of grassland and an area of timber near Longtown, Mo.

50 years ago: Jan. 13, 1961

Harrison & Richard Co. of Cape Girardeau is given a contract to build the two-story wing needed for the Community Hospital in Sikeston, Mo.

The last possible point of breach in the multimillion-dollar levee system protecting thousands of acres of fertile Illinois farmland directly across the Mississippi from Cape Girardeau will be closed under a $492,830 contract; a substandard section of the Clear Creek back levee will be brought up to the same standard as the rest by the S.W. Hardwick Co. of Beardstown, Ill.

75 years ago: Jan. 13, 1936

Plans for Cape Girardeau's National Guard armory are approved in the district Works Progress Administration office in Sikeston, Mo., and will be dispatched at once to the Missouri office of the WPA.

A 1936 model Plymouth coupe owned by Irvin Hecht was stolen last night from its parking place in front of the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Louis Hecht, 404 Bellevue St., and is found abandoned early today on Washington Avenue; it is the 15th auto stolen and recovered here in six weeks.

100 years ago: Jan. 13, 1911

The three newspapers in Jackson have been in a row over county finances, and only the inauguration of a new County Court has put an end to the onslaught upon the county treasury; The Cash-Book, a Democratic paper, has been giving the Herald and The Volksfreund, both Republican in leaning, the very dickens because the latter have been getting more county printing funds than the Cash-Book.

Florence Martin of Charleston, Mo., mother of Mrs. Dr. M.A. Grissom, has moved here and will occupy one of the new Grissom flats on Spanish Street.

-- Sharon K. Sanders