Out of the past: May 8

1990

By a 5-2 vote Monday, the city council approved an amended construction contract for a new fire station on Mount Auburn Road, ending a yearlong impasse on the project.

Workers with Haynes Demolition of Cairo, Illinois, pull down the remains of the smoke stack at the old Florsheim Shoe factory on North Main Street; the site should be cleared within the next two weeks.

1965

Time turned back many decades in Jackson yesterday, as the town formally opened observance of the community's sesquicentennial with a street parade that emphasizes the town's history.

The Missouri House of Representatives this week took a step toward solving one of its toughest problems -- reapportionment -- by approving a constitutional amendment calling for 168 representatives and districts of about 26,000 population; for Cape Girardeau County, this probably will mean Cape Girardeau Township will form one district.

1940

A proposal that a central clinic be established in Cape Girardeau to look after resident, needy individuals who must have treatment at community expense is made by Mayor Hinkle Statler; he says the plan has been proposed by Dr. C.A.W. Zimmermann, secretary of the Cape County Medical Society, and by other professional men of the city.

Apparently happy but grumbling some at the expense, an 82-year-old man weds a 79-year-old woman, both of Carterville, Illinois, at the courthouse in Jackson; the whole adventure costs Tommy Henderson and the former Mrs. Olive Watson $7.75: $3 for a car to come here, $1.25 for the bridge toll and $3.50 for the license, application and the fee of the justice.

1915

A party of Eastern insurance officials representing the New York Life and the Aetna Insurance companies is touring the Little River Drainage District for the purpose of determining whether the drainage work is going to accomplish anything sufficiently worthwhile to make the purchase by those companies of the bonds of the district a safe investment.

A front-page story in The Daily Republican newspaper tells of the torpedoing of the Cunard liner, the Lusitania, off the Irish coast yesterday; it reports only 703 passengers and crew had been saved and probably 1,346 lost; it is thought 188 of the Americans aboard the Lusitania were saved.

-- Sharon K. Sanders