Out of the past 7/22/07

25 years ago: July 22, 1982

With a helicopter for an escort, Michael Reagan -- son of President Ronald Reagan -- blazes past Cape Girardeau in a speedboat en route to setting a new upriver speed record between New Orleans and St. Louis.

Les Mace of Springfield, Mo., governor of the Missouri-Arkansas District, Kiwanis International, makes his official visit and is speaker when the Kiwanis Club of Cape Girardeau observes its 40th anniversary.

50 years ago: July 22, 1957

Judge Marshall Craig convenes the grand jury in circuit court and in his charge, other than calling attention to general matters to be investigated, directs it to look into the unsolved murder of Bonnie Huffman three years ago; it is the third grand jury to probe the slaying.

Support of the Cape Girardeau Building and Construction Trades Council, representing nine different labor organizations, is pledged for the approaching airport bond election; C.W. Campbell tells the city council the labor group "will do everything it can to help the city in every way in support of the bond issue."

75 years ago: July 22, 1932

Threats of rain bring a measure of relief from the intense heat in Cape Girardeau, but the weather bureau indicates the break in the torrid wave might be of short duration; the afternoon temperature hovers around 94; not cool, but not so hot as in recent days.

The second victim of an explosion of a gasoline motor aboard a Mississippi River ferry at the Illmo landing yesterday dies at a Cape Girardeau Hospital; Ethel Hopper, 19, was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Hopper of near Arbor, Mo.

100 years ago: July 22, 1907

One of the Eagle Packet Co.'s steamers stops in Cape Girardeau in the morning on its way to St. Louis; it is loaded with 50,000 feet of cypress logs from the Red River for the C.F. Lipton Lumber Co. of St. Louis.

The measure to appropriate $900 toward the building of a bridge across Sloan's Creek, which would connect Cape Girardeau with the new suburbs north of the creek, fails to receive a majority vote among members of the city council.

-- Sharon K. Sanders