25 years ago: Dec. 29, 1980

DEXTER, Mo. -- Several homes about a mile east of Dexter are evacuated early in the morning, when a Missouri-Pacific train car containing butyl alcohol is punctured, leaking the highly flammable liquid onto the ground; Dexter police and firemen, Stoddard County deputies and Missouri State Highway Patrol troopers are at the scene.

All of the approximately 600 Cape Girardeau County road markers should be erected within a month, say county court officials; about half that number have already been installed on county roads.

50 years ago: Dec. 29, 1955

A pro forma decree of incorporation establishing the Cape Osteopathic Hospital as a not-for-profit corporation has been formally awarded the Osteopathic Hospital Corporation by Judge Marshall Craig in Common Pleas Court.

Options, which must be taken up within three months, have been filed on tracts of land east of Illmo by Texas Eastern Transmission Corp., operators of the Big Inch and Little Inch pipelines, for development of a projected conversion program; the company is planning to convert the Little Inch pipeline from use as a carrier of natural gas to use as a carrier of liquid petroleum products.

75 years ago: Dec. 29, 1930

A formal protest against the order of the Public Service Commission requiring the Missouri Utilities Co. to install a filter plant in connection with the present water plant in Cape Girardeau is sent to the commission by a citizens' committee; the committee points out that the building of the filter plant at the present operation would be only a temporary and makeshift solution to the problem.

G.A. Seabaugh and L.W. Statler of Cape Girardeau recently completed construction of a three-room frame tenant house on the farm of R.B. Oliver Sr., near Conran, Mo.; today they begin construction of a four-room residence near Neelys Landing.

100 years ago: Dec. 29, 1905

Late yesterday afternoon, the first street car climbed Broadway hill and made the trip to the Normal School; the usual delays and annoyances in starting any new industry are being experienced, but each day sees an improvement; the few cars that are making trips are heavily patronized.

J.W. Williams, the clothier and gents' furnisher, has decided to retire from business and has turned his stock of goods over to the Chicago Salvage Co.

-- Sharon K. Sanders