25 years ago: May 8, 1981

Money -- specifically the lack of it -- will be the biggest problem facing higher education in the 1980s, members of the Southeast Missouri State University Board of Regents and the Missouri Coordinating Board for Higher Education agreed in an unprecedented joint session yesterday on campus.

A couple of controversial calls by umpires have Notre Dame High School baseball players, fans and Coach Jim Glastetter kicking up a storm after the Scott City Rams rally for four runs in the bottom of the seventh for a 6-5 win in the 2A-3A district championship game.

50 years ago: May 8, 1956

Marking one phase of its sesquicentennial celebration, Cape Girardeau salutes the International Shoe Co.; top-level officials of the company, headed by Byron A. Gray, chairman of the board, are on hand for ceremonies held in conjunction with a dinner-meeting at the Arena Building; appreciation of the community is expressed by Rush H. Limbaugh, an attorney and president of the Missouri Bar Association.

Many Girardeans at 12:30 p.m. hear an explosive noise, which evidently is the breaking of the sound barrier by one or more jet planes; some houses shake when the blast comes.

75 years ago: May 8, 1931

The seven-foot gravel roadway, paralleling the 10-foot pavement on Highway 74, southwest of Cape Girardeau, is being constructed by the contractor; the six miles of pavement is now curing, and graveling has been started at Dutchtown; paving of the Highway 61 viaduct at the east end of the new sector of Highway 74 has also been finished.

D.M. Scivally, engineer with the Cape Special Road District, consulted yesterday with Hillard Brewster, landscape architect for the Missouri State Highway Department, about the plans for an outside boulevard, or scenic drive, on the outer edges of Cape Girardeau.

100 years ago: May 8, 1906

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Cape Girardeau, the Wednesday Club is displaying a great number of relics of by-gone days at the Normal School auditorium.

The great performance of Western life, Kit Carson, will be given in Cape Girardeau tomorrow at the show grounds on North Main Street; the performance will be given under a large tent, where there is plenty of room to give a fine production of the romantic drama.

-- Sharon K. Sanders