Out of the past 1/7/13

1988

Girardeans who went to bed last night expecting to wake up to heavy snow are pleasantly surprised; instead of 8 inches, only a little more than an inch of snow fell on the city.

Campaigning for the election planned by the Cape Girardeau School District is already gearing up nearly six months before voters go to the polls; unlike the last two low-key campaigns to pass a 48-cent referendum, this effort will strive to inform every voter of the issues.

1963

The Cape Girardeau City Council and Central Packing Co. finally come to terms on the sale to the city of a tract on which a sewage disposal plant will be located; the council authorizes the purchase of 4.8 acres in South Cape Girardeau for $15,750.

New postal rates go into effect, bringing a continual flood through the Cape Girardeau Post Office, as customers purchase the new five-cent stamps or one-cent stamps to go with the four-centers they have remaining on hand.

1938

The long-lived liquidation case of the Cape Girardeau Northern Railroad in Common Pleas Court, which will conclude this month, has been on the court's docket for 95 terms in the period of nearly 14 years the rail property has been in receivership.

The committee appointed by the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce to organize a memorial for the late W.F.D. Batjer has rethought the suggestion of planting a tree; instead, it has been recommended that a sundial in Courthouse Park might make a better memorial to the former chamber secretary.

1913

A fierce conflagration occurred last night, when the plant of the St. Louis Oil Co. in the West End caught fire; the fire came so rapidly employees barely had time to escape with their lives; one of them, Louis Suedekum, was severely burned.

An epidemic of spinal meningitis prevails in the Illinois territory just across from Cape Girardeau, with nine people having died from the disease in the area between East Cape Girardeau and Gale in just a few days; the mayor of Cape Girardeau has imposed a quarantine, ordering a special officer on the riverfront here to see that no one is permitted to enter the city from the infected district.

-- Sharon K. Sanders