Out of the past 2/3/06

25 years ago: Feb. 3, 1981

A special election will be held in Jackson June 2 on an $8 million bond issue to upgrade the municipal electric plant; city officials say the bond issue is needed to help pay for the purchase of two additional diesel engine generators and construction of an addition to the plant, which is over 50 years old.

Cape Girardeau election judges are spending more time knitting, crocheting, reading and watching television than they are passing out ballots to voters in today's city council primary election; other election officials say they are just trying to keep warm while manning the polls.

50 years ago: Feb. 3, 1956

Ozark Air Lines, which had threatened to halt service into Cape Girardeau unless some action was taken to improve taxi-strips at the municipal airport, suspended service briefly recently until the south taxi-strip was opened for its use; as a result of the interruption, lasting only a few hours, the Cape Girardeau City Council indicated to Ozark that it would have holes in the taxi-strips repaired with asphalt as soon as the weather moderates.

If January, normally a slow construction month, is indicative of the work to come in Cape Girardeau during the major building months, the city will shatter all previous records for residential, business and miscellaneous building.

75 years ago: Feb. 3, 1931

Representatives of six oil companies doing business in Cape Girardeau appeared before the city council Monday and filed a straw vote, the result of one day's work, on the proposed retail gasoline tax; the vote, taken at various gasoline filling stations throughout the city, showed that 445 people were against the gasoline tax, and only seven were for the proposed measure.

A band of 40 gypsies - men, women and children - is crowded into police headquarters, as law officers of three states seek to obtain information from them tying two of their number to a bank robbery in Henderson, Ky.

100 years ago: Feb. 3, 1906

O.M. Monroe, president of the Jefferson County bank at De Soto, Mo., and E.S. Coxwell, owner of the telephone system there, are in Cape Girardeau attending Common Pleas Court.

The women of the Normal School initiated work in their new gymnasium yesterday; as soon as the necessary apparatus can be provided, they will do a complete course of gymnastics.

-- Sharon K. Sanders