Out of the past 4/16/12

25 years ago: April 16, 1987

The Southeast Missouri State University women's gymnastic team was honored at a special ceremony yesterday for winning the U.S. Gymnastics Federation Division II and III national titles.

The high cost of malpractice insurance for doctors who deliver babies is causing many physicians to drop that part of their practice; currently, there are only five obstetrician-gynecologists remaining in practice here, and only nine doctors in town deliver babies.

50 years ago: April 16, 1962

A tractor trailer truck, its cargo of jam and jelly, and a steel-beamed bridge plunged in a single heap into Cinque Hommes Creek on Route B, about a mile south of Perryville, Mo., yesterday, after the truck slammed into the bridge; the driver and an unidentified hitchhiker escaped injury, but the damage to the truck, contents and bridge were estimated at between $80,000 and $90,000.

The city council turns down a proposed subdivision plat because two lots would block the way of a through Maple Street; Camelot Terraces would have been located between South West End Boulevard and Minnesota Avenue and south of College Street.

75 years ago: April 16, 1937

Cape Girardeau is hosting another convention, this one the annual three-day gathering of the Missouri State Jaycees.

CHAFFEE, Mo. -- A crew of Chaffee men, donating their labor, has cleaned the grounds at the former bumper manufacturing building, the structure to be used as a part of the factory for the Collins-Morris shoe plant; construction work is to begin at once; the U-shaped building will have 34,000 square feet of floor space.

100 years ago: April 16, 1912

During the storm that raged in Cape Girardeau yesterday afternoon, there seemed to be a sort of whirlwind or small cyclone formed in the west end of the city; at the brick yards of the Cape Girardeau Press Brick Co., four men and a boy with four teams ran under a large clay shed for shelter; the winds struck the big structure with such force that the shed was lifted on the north end and blown to the ground; two men and four horses were caught in the wreckage.

The relief boat Erastus Wells has gone on its second mission of help to the flooded country south of here; most of the provisions taken down was clothing.

-- Sharon K. Sanders