Out of the past 7/10/11

25 years ago: July 10, 1986

Wearing the name plates of both the Bulletin-Journal and the Southeast Missourian, the first edition of the merged publication is produced; Gary Rust, owner of the Bulletin-Journal, purchased the daily last month and combined it with his three-day-a-week newspaper.

MARBLE HILL, Mo. -- Unbearably hot conditions in the Bollinger County Jail have forced Sheriff Januar Peters to move prisoners to jails at Jackson and Bloomfield, Mo.; the temperature in the jail yesterday was more than 100 degrees.

50 years ago: July 10, 1961

Voters will ballot tomorrow for the second time on a proposal to issue municipal bonds in the amount of $1,598,000 to construct a sewage treatment plant and interceptor system to end Cape Girardeau's share of pollution in the Mississippi River.

An across-the-board $250 increase in salary for teachers in the Cape Girardeau public school system, the figure to be added to each increment of the salary schedule, and a corresponding increase on a predetermined percentage basis for supervisors and principals, are ordered by the school board.

75 years ago: July 10, 1936

Construction work is set to begin within the next 10 days on three major pile dike projects along the Mississippi River in the vicinity of Cape Girardeau; contractors are getting ready to start, and the first work will probably be done at Devil's Island, north of the city.

Andy Heisserer, prominent Scott County farmer, says he can't recall when he has seen such fine wheat and such large yields; his threshing outfit finished up for Albert Schwartz this week, getting 3,040 bushels of wheat from 102 acres.

100 years ago: July 10, 1911

A new threshing engine arrives by boat and is unloaded for Jacob LaCroix of near Gordonville; he ordered the machine early, but it didn't arrive soon enough for the threshing season.

At last it comes: an old-time soaking rain, which means hundreds of thousands of dollars in increased corn and hay crops; the afternoon rain brings an immediate drop in temperature to below the 80-degree mark; but shortly after, the heat and humidity return to a fearful level.

-- Sharon K. Sanders