Out of the past: Feb. 29

NOTE: Because Leap Day didn't fall on our normally featured years of 1991, 1966 and 1941, items from Leap Days preceding those years are included in this column.

1988

The hiring of a city planner and the resignation of the city's personnel/risk manager are announced by Cape Girardeau city manager J. Ronald Fischer. Kent Bratton, assistant director with the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission, is the new city manager. Mike Pounds is resigning as personnel/risk manager to take a position as city administrator of Glendale, Missouri.

U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson said he will be a member of an agricultural trade delegation that will travel to Geneva, Switzerland, this weekend; the group will engage in talks with world trade officials from the European Community, France, Germany, Japan and Argentina.

1964

Capt. Lee Hickam, Salvation Army leader here for four years, will be leaving Cape Girardeau after March 3; he is being transferred to the Army installation in Alton, Illinois.

EAST PRAIRIE, Mo. -- Two University of Missouri anthropologists have uncovered four Indian skeletons, believed to be at least 1,200 years old, in the Hoecake Indian Mound, southeast of East Prairie. The three males and one female were either killed or volunteered their lives to accompany the soul of a dead chief into the life beyond, according to one of the scientists. Diggers expect to find the remains of a chief in a chamber below where these skeletons were uncovered.

1940

Rebuilding of the old Mississippi River levee in Illinois, from Gale to Ware, a distance of about 13 miles, is included in a list of suggested projects for the year to be undertaken if Congress makes an appropriation for the flood-control work proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers; this project alone would cost about $370,000.

The long-awaited motion picture "Gone With the Wind," now showing at the Broadway Theater, is attracting large crowds; many are infrequent motion-picture goers who have been lured to the theater to see Margaret Mitchell's epic story.

1916

O.W. Hartner and E. Corder, railroad men and partners in a building and business enterprise in Illmo, have let the contract for the construction of a brick building there to Linus Penzel of Jackson. The building will be opposite and facing the bank. They plan to open a confectionery business in the new structure.

James Pingle, a well-known resident of the north end of Cape Girardeau, plans to open a grocery store in Donnybrook tomorrow; the building the store is to occupy was completed a few days ago.

-- Sharon K. Sanders