Out of the past: June 26

1990

With balloons, national dignitaries and "bombs" bursting, Jackson's Lee-Rowan Co. yesterday announced its eighth expansion in 25 years; U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, Missouri Treasurer Wendell Bailey and several local officials spoke to about 500 guests and Lee-Rowen employees gathered to dedicate a new 100,000-square-foot warehouse.

CAIRO, Ill. -- The city of Cairo is gambling its economic future on riverboat casinos; civic leaders have announced a Philadelphia-based group plans to submit an application to the Illinois Gaming Commission that calls for operating two riverboat casinos on the Mississippi River out of Cairo.

1965

Cape Girardeau businessmen are taking a cautious but optimistic "wait-and-see" attitude toward the $4.6 billion excise tax reduction bill that went into effect this week; the bill repealed the wartime "luxury tax" on about 20 general categories of goods, including appliances, campers and supplies, cosmetics, furs, handbags, jewelry, lighters and matches, luggage, musical instruments, pens, pinball machines, playing cards, pool tables, records and players, sporting goods, typewriters, TVs and radios.

It's moving day at the Cape Girardeau post office; moving vans back up to the old building at Broadway and Fountain Street even before the final window bangs shut in the lobby; the new post office is at Bellevue and Frederick streets.

1940

Relatives of Henry T. Putz are becoming apprehensive as to the welfare of this young Jackson man and his wife, who are in Southern Rhodesia in South Africa; they haven't heard from them since April 29; the Union of South Africa is threatened with civil war between two factions, the one being pro-Nazi and the other pro-British; Putz is a mining engineer.

M.E. Cooper, an explosives expert of the DuPont de NeMours Co., used nitroglycerin to "shoot" a newly drilled water well at the rear of the Midwest Dairy Products Co. plant, 25 S. Spanish St., yesterday; a 100-foot column of water spouted from the 1,200-foot well, when 75 quarts of nitro were discharged at the bottom of the shaft to loosen the sand strata, permitting the water to flow freely into the well.

1915

A. Dittlinger and son, the coal dealers with office and yards on Aquamsi Street, have purchased the property on South Spanish Street that had been occupied by the Studebaker sales agency and are remodeling and building on to the place preparatory to moving there.

Haman & Wichterich, owners of a drugstore at 609 Broadway, have purchased the building in which the business is located from I.H. Lake; the price was $5,000.

-- Sharon K. Sanders