Out of the past 4/3/11

25 years ago: April 3, 1986

Norman W. Copeland announces his intention to seek the Republican nomination for Cape Girardeau County sheriff when the county Republican Central Committee convenes April 9; Copeland is serving as interim sheriff since the resignation of Dwight Thomas on March 27.

The Cape Girardeau City Council last night reversed itself and narrowly rejected a plan to place ornamental stop signs at the downtown intersection of Themis and Main streets; the signs are an effort to protect a soon-to-be-installed street clock there; a number of accidents have already occurred at the intersection.

50 years ago: April 3, 1961

Reacting to plans to oppose public housing in Cape Girardeau, members of Cape Girardeau's black churches and the local branch of the NAACP have sent The Missourian newspaper a letter asking its readers to support the housing project for low-income people.

Cape Girardeau voters may be asked before June 15 to ballot a second time on bonds to finance construction of a sewage-disposal system to meet the city's needs under the federal-state water pollution acts.

75 years ago: April 3, 1936

One of the coldest April days in Cape Girardeau County in 43 years has area orchardists worried about fruit crops; the mercury dips to 24 degrees at Cape Girardeau and to 23 degrees at Jackson; particularly hard-hit are strawberries, which were just beginning to bloom in some places.

Mary Langlois, 99, Cape Girardeau's oldest resident and a descendant of French nobility, dies at Saint Francis Hospital, where she had resided since 1928.

100 years ago: April 3, 1911

Heber Nations, former crack football player of the Normal School and husband of the former Miss Sharp of this city, has sold his Voice of the People -- a weekly newspaper at Flat River, Mo. -- and has gone to St. Louis to work as a copy reader on one of the newspapers there; George L. Northcutt of Leadwood, Mo., is the new owner of the Voice.

The tennis season having opened at the Normal School, players of that popular game are happy with the addition of two new courts, making five in all.

-- Sharon K. Sanders