Out of the past: Aug. 4

1995

A St. Louis firm will manufacture business jets in Ames, Iowa, rather than in Cape Girardeau because local investors there will contribute $2.4 million over the next three months to the project, company officials say; VisionAire Corp. had considered manufacturing its new single-engine, five-passenger business jet on a 40-acre site just north of the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport.

Local Humane Society leaders hope a new crematorium will help dispose of the 3,500 animals it must do away with each year; Larry Tidd, president of the Human Society of Southeast Missouri, said the organization started looking at crematoriums in response to stricter Environmental Protection Agency landfill guidelines.

1970

Shortly after 2 a.m., Cape Girardeau police encounter the Pi Kappa Alpha fire truck being pushed in near-total darkness by five unidentified persons northbound on Spanish Street; seeing the patrol car, the would-be fire truck abductors flee into the night, letting the truck roll over the curb and stop, undamaged; the pranksters had apparently taken the truck from a garage at 125 S. Spanish St.

Cape Girardeau County Clerk Rusby C. Crites reports the normal run of problems for election workers in today's primary; one chief problem is the appearance of the two county issues -- abolishment of the office of county school superintendent and construction of a new juvenile home; both ballots look very similar and, in some polling places, election workers take them as the same, offering only one of the ballots to voters until the matter is brought to their attention.

1945

Nearly 3,770 persons viewed the German atrocity pictures in two days' time in August 1945. The large photographs were brought to Cape Girardeau by the Southeast Missourian and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. (G.D. Fronabarger ~ Southeast Missourian archive)

Doors to Houck Field House are thrown open at 1 p.m. for the first exhibit of the life-size photographs showing Nazi brutality in the treatment of prisoners in concentration camps; enlarged from actual photos made by Army and private agency cameramen after the camps were liberated, the photos show vividly how the Nazis brutally treated their victims; the atrocity photos are being shown today and tomorrow under the sponsorship of The Southeast Missourian and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The first showing of the German atrocity movie films, brought here under sponsorship of the Jaycees, will be Monday afternoon at the Rialto Theater; the films will be shown here three days, with no admission being charged; no person under 16 years of age will be admitted.

1920

Reflecting on the benefits Cape Girardeau derives from Schuchert's band, including the weekly band concerts held in the warm months, The Daily Republican newspaper states, "It would be worth the money to make the Schuchert band a municipal band ... Cape Girardeau could have a municipal band, like ... (Salina) Kansas, and the additional tax would be so small that taxpayers would hardly notice it."

The Capahas baseball team is floundering on the financial rocks, and unless assistance is secured immediately, it is doubtful they will play this season after Sunday; manager Dep Barenkamp tells a reporter he is now $295.24 "to the bad," and there are still some bills to be paid.

-- Sharon K. Sanders