Out of the past 4/12/10

25 years ago: April 12, 1985

Lou Brock, Major League Baseball's all-time-leading base stealer and Hall of Famer, was the featured guest last night brought to Cape Girardeau by Thilenius Distributing Co. for a fundraising dinner for the Muscular Dystrophy Association at the Ramada Inn.

John K. Hale, president and chief executive of Cape Mercantile Bank and Trust Co., enters the only bid for the Southern States property, more commonly known as the Black Forest Villages, when it is sold on the auction block on the Common Pleas Courthouse steps; Hale's bid, which topped the $400,000 mark, gives Mercantile ownership of the farm, along with a pair of full-scale 1870 vintage German villages.

50 years ago: April 12, 1960

Death from polio of an East Prairie, Mo., woman yesterday serves to focus attention on the possibility that there could be another serious outbreak of the malady in Southeast Missouri this summer.

Floodwaters of the Mississippi River, held back from the major part of the Main Street area by floodwall and earthen levee, laps in the morning a tenth of an inch below the crest that is expected some time today; the reading on the riverfront gauge in the morning is 38.4 feet.

75 years ago: April 12, 1935

Found on a street in near freezing temperature minus his suit and hat, a man, picked up by police, is believed to have been the victim of thieves, who also took his money; the man, who had evidently been drinking, shows up on North Main Street at 4 a.m., wearing only his underclothing and shoes.

L.F. Brenneisen of Cape Girardeau has signed a contract to build and lease to St. Clair Refining Co., a gasoline filling station at Benton, Mo., at the intersection of highways 61 and 55.

100 years ago: April 12, 1910

The northbound passenger train on the Cape Girardeau & Chester Railroad strikes a cow just north of Fruitland in the morning, which ditches the engine; no one is injured, nor is any damage done to anything except the cow.

W.W. Hinchey has begun the construction of a new home on North Frederick Street.

-- Sharon K. Sanders