Out of the past 9/15/08

25 years ago: Sept. 15, 1983

Just as predicted, yesterday's tractor pull helped attract 15,000 people to the SEMO District Fair; tonight's featured attraction is an appearance by the Charlie Daniels Band.

Difficulty in obtaining funds and a steady stream of users has put the Cape County Women's Safe House in a financial bind, one it hopes to lessen through marriage license and divorce decree fees; under state statute, shelters can receive funding through a fee placed on those decrees in a county.

50 years ago: Sept. 15, 1958

Burglars paid visits to eight business and professional offices over the weekend, gaining access to four of them; however, for their work, the thieves gained only $4 from a petty cash fund in the office of Finch, Finch & Knehans law firm.

A contract to move dirt on the new elementary school site near Dennis Scivally Park is awarded by the Cape Girardeau School Board to Central Materials Co. on a low bid of $8,769.06.

75 years ago: Sept. 15, 1933

Common Pleas Court Judge L.L. Bowman appoints a commission to determine damages resulting from tracts being taken for construction of the farm-to-market route between Fruitland and Neelys Landing; commissioners are A.D. Milde of Jackson, Maurice Bohnsack of Cape Girardeau and Morris Thompson of Oak Ridge.

The county jail at Jackson is jammed to capacity with prisoners; there will be no relief for some time, as the warden of the state penitentiary has sent out orders not to transfer any prisoners to that institution because of an epidemic of sleeping sickness in the state.

100 years ago: Sept. 15, 1908

Tom Killian is instantly killed in the morning in the woods near Parma, Mo.; he is employed felling trees, when a monster of the forest comes crashing to the ground; the tree swerves suddenly and strikes Killian; he was a young man and lived at Oran, Mo.

Arthur E. Koerner, who has been with the Cape Girardeau Brewery for many months as brewmaster, leaves for St. Louis and a trip through the West; he has severed connections with the brewery and hasn't decided where to locate.

— Sharon K. Sanders