Out of the past: Dec. 28

1993

A gasoline tanker truck loaded with 8,500 gallons of gasoline overturned yesterday morning on Cape Girardeau County Route C, about one mile south of New Wells; about 8,000 gallons of gasoline spilled from the truck, but there was no explosion or fire; the driver is in fair condition at a local hospital.

A St. Louis truck driver was injured yesterday in a chemical spill at the Biokyowa plant along Nash Road; he was treated and released from a local hospital after he inhaled fumes from a hydrochloric acid spill; about 1,900 gallons of the chemical spilled.

1968

Cape Girardeau City Manager Paul F. Frederick, who came under fire yesterday morning when backed-up sewers caused flooding of basements in the Landgraf Subdivision and nearby Howell Street, says that if the residents had placed drain plugs in their basements, there would have been much less flooding; there are no storm sewers in that area, and the heavy rains in the two-hour period caused the lines to back up.

A trace of snow falls in Cape Girardeau in the morning, following 2.73 inches of rain yesterday; the snow is a light blanket at Jackson, not quite enough to cover grass or stick to streets.

1943

Snow is falling over most of Missouri, and it may reach Cape Girardeau and Southeast Missouri by nightfall; one to five inches of snow has already fallen in the Flat River, Missouri, area.

Alton Bray of Fornfelt has taken a job as a physics instructor at a naval base at Amarillo, Texas; he started for Amarillo Monday morning; he was accompanied by his mother and sister, Mrs. L.W. Bray and Lois Bray, as far as Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where they will visit Mr. and Mrs. Bill Bray and family until Friday.

1918

The injunction asked by citizens of Scott County to prevent the county court from spending money realized by the sale of bonds for the building of roads was denied by Judge Frank Kelly yesterday; among other things, the petitioners asserted that pieces of roads have been built not in accordance with the agreements and plans decided on when the bond issue passed, and that the road engineer and supervisor had drawn large sums of money as salary and had failed to perform their duties satisfactorily.

Mayor H.H. Haas appeals to residents to do their part in keeping the influenza epidemic from breaking out again; if that happens, a more severe ban will have to be implemented; Haas says there have been 43 deaths from influenza in Cape Girardeau; the city handled 1,401 cases of influenza all told.

-- Sharon K. Sanders