Out of the past: Jan. 31

1999

R Mission, an all-female quintet from Hannibal LaGrange Baptist College, gives concerts at two area church; the group performs at 8 a. m. at Cape Bible Chapel and at 10 a.m. at Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Calvin Taylor, a pianist and recording artist, performs in the morning at Centenary United Methodist Church; Taylor presents a sermon of song called “Holy Scripture: Alive with Sounds of Music.”

1974

Dr. Dallas F. Albers, director of the trimester-modular scheduling plan at Cape Girardeau Central High School, confirms he will leave the school system at the end of the school year and says “this has been common knowledge” for the past three years; he calls his leaving “a sort of feeble excuse” for three school board members to vote against continuing the trimester plan in the 1974-75 school year.

A free Mississippi River traffic bridge at Chester, Illinois, may be no more than two years away; provisions for freeing the bridge in the next two years are contained in the National Waterways Act approved yesterday by a joint Senate-House conference committee in Washington, D. C.

1949

Winter, which has pretty much given Cape Girardeau the run-around this season, struck in full fury over the weekend, sending the thermometer plunging to a low of 5 above early yesterday and following up last night with an unexpected 2-inch snowfall, virtually the first of the year; the snow delights the children, who bring out sleds; skaters take advantage of the cold weather to try their blades on the ice at Capaha Park lagoon.

TOKYO, Japan — The bodies of Miles W. Vaughn, 58, United Press International vice president for Asia, and Maj. Thomas R. Haddock of the Army Dental Corps are brought to the U. S. Army 49th Hospital; Vaughn and Haddock, who was from Cape Girardeau, were drowned yesterday when a small sampan was overturned in Tokyo Bay while duck hunting; Mr. And Mrs. T. J. Haddock of Cape Girardeau have received no official word of the accident in which their son lost his life, learning of his death through unofficial channels.

1924

Rumors are flying thick and fast that the Hamilton Brown Shoe Co. of St. Louis has purchased a site in Cape Girardeau and will build a shoe factory here; the rumor is that Hamilton Brown has purchased a site in the West End and that a contract for construction of a factory has been let; none of the rumors can be verified.

Illmo residents are commenting on the feat of Harold Haley, a schoolboy, who on Sunday rode his bicycle across the ice of the Mississippi River from Mannings Landing to Thebes, Illinois, and returned; it was the first time that the trip was ever made on a bicycle, local residents say.