Out of the past: Aug. 30

1990

Environmental Protection Agency officials announce a plan for the cleanup of the Missouri Electric Works site at a public hearing here; the cleanup will take approximately 15 years to complete and will cost nearly $10 million.

The price of gasoline in Cape Girardeau drops a dime, after rising the same amount about one and one-half weeks ago; after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, gasoline prices increased throughout the United States and around the world.

1965

School superintendent Charles E. House announces the Louis J. Schultz School, undergoing remodeling, won't be opened Wednesday for the first day of classes; the approximately 600 pupils who are to attend that school won't begin classes until Sept. 7.

Kage School in 1954. (G.D. Fronabarger ~ Southeast Missourian archive)

A group of Kage School District parents, in an effort to illustrate what they feel to be inadequacies of Kage School, take their children there in the morning for the opening classes and, in so doing, more than double the expected enrollment; parents have a variety of grievances, ranging from what they contend are the use of 1929 textbooks to outdoor toilet facilities.

1940

Teachers College Dean Vest C. Myers is guest speaker at the dedication of the new granite gymnasium for Fredericktown, Missouri, High School; the building was constructed this year at a cost of $31,000; Myers is accompanied to Fredericktown by professor Burwell Fox.

Preliminary plans are being made for a Republican rally at Caruthersville, Missouri, and it may be tied in with the fair to be held Oct. 2 through 6; the plan is to have a five-state affair, drawing politicians from Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas and Missouri; an invitation to attend will be extended to Wendell L. Willkie, the GOP presidential nominee.

1915

A fire, deliberately set, is discovered in the Mertens building at Broadway and Sprigg Street at 1 a.m. by an elderly man who happens to be passing along the front of the building; the fire had started between the flooring of the second floor and the ceiling of the first floor; it is believed someone slipped into the building and poured coal oil or something through a hole in the floor and then set a match to it; little damage is done to the structure.

The beautiful country home of Dr. H.L. Cunningham is nearing completion; Samuel Boutin, contractor, says it will be completed in about two weeks.

-- Sharon K. Sanders