Out of the past 2/5/08

25 years ago: Feb. 5, 1983

A capacity crowd filled Rose Theater last night for an evening with Jo Sullivan; she presented the music of "Frank Loesser and Friends."

Guests arrive in the evening amid snow flurries for the seventh annual Town and Gown Ball at the Holiday Inn Convention Center; 300 faculty members and guests attended the ball, sponsored by the Faculty Dames of Southeast Missouri State University.

50 years ago: Feb. 5, 1958

Bravado and bluster, which had marked the three-day evasion of an offender from an army of police officers from four states, gave way to abject surrender at Paducah, Ky., last night; the kidnapper of Missouri State Trooper William R. Little, frightened and weary, ran a block to the mid-town police station, his hands in the air, a pistol sticking from his belt, as two police officers ran in hot pursuit.

The proposal to issue bonds of $110,000 to provide additional classroom space failed for a second time in a special election yesterday at Oak Ridge; voters of the school district were short a few votes of the needed two-thirds majority.

75 years ago: Feb. 5, 1933

The Rev. Edward Little, the new pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Cape Girardeau, preaches his first sermons at his new charge; he succeeds the Rev. E.A. Conklin, recently resigned; Conklin was pastor of the local church two years.

The Rev. R.E. McElmurry has resigned as pastor of the Baptist Church at Fornfelt, effective March 1; he has been at the Scott County church about 18 months, going there from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville, Ky., where he was a student.

100 years ago: Feb. 5, 1908

A petition was presented to the Cape Girardeau County Court on Monday for the establishment of a drainage ditch, to be known as Ditch No. 1; the ditch begins a little below Dutchtown and runs seven miles in the southern direction through the spreads of Hubble and will articulate with a ditch that will be dug by the big drainage district recently formed.

W.B. Ragsdale of the Buckner-Ragsdale Store is in New York City with C.M. Buckner buying spring and summer merchandise; owing to the recent money panic, they are able to buy goods at ridiculously low prices.

-- Sharon K. Sanders