Out of the past: Dec. 13

1990

A trustee sale of the former Cape Girardeau WISER Inc. building on Linden Street yesterday netted sham bids of $1 and $2 from disgruntled former employees, before First Exchange Bank of Cape Girardeau, the note-holder, submitted a winning bid of $711,773.83.

The Cape Girardeau Parks and Recreation Advisory Board has voted unanimously to recommend the city build an underpass for a fitness trail beneath a new Bloomfield Road bridge; the board shunned the city staff's advice to install a pedestrian signal light at the trail's Bloomfield Road intersection just east of Kingshighway.

1965

Douglas Wayne Thompson, who was convicted of murdering Cape Girardeau policeman Herbert L. Goss and sentenced to die four years ago this month, wins a new trial from the Missouri Supreme Court; the court held that evidence of spent cartridges had been suppressed by the prosecution in Thompson's original trial held in Marble Hill, Missouri.

Kicking off 14 nights of caroling by various groups, the Central High School chorus and a group from Chaffee (Missouri) High School sing for three hours on the front steps of the Common Pleas Courthouse.

1940

A sharp drop in temperature overnight, with the promise of sleet and snow tonight, sets the telephone buzzing at the Social Security office with pleas of families suffering for lack of fuel; but that office isn't able to lend much aid.

C.E. Brayton of St. Louis, head of the Brayton Flying Service Inc., conferred with Teachers College officials and others yesterday about the details of a pilot-training course to be offered at the school.

1915

Dr. George W. Tarlton, the patriarch of Cape Girardeau County physicians, dies in the morning at his apartment on upper Broadway; he was born in Kentucky, opposite New Madrid, Missouri, on Oct. 13, 1849; his widowed father, having brought his family to Wayne County, was killed by bushwhackers during the Civil War.

ORAN, Mo. -- A group of expert hunters returned Saturday from a hunting and fishing trip to Running Slough, near Morehouse, Missouri; they traveled down Wednesday in three wagons, using the same to haul the game -- consisting of two ducks and a swamp rabbit -- home; making up the party were the Rev. T.M. Finley, David Spradlin, John Beshears, George Shively, Zeb Maxwell, Joe Glenn, Orion Henley and William Strain of Oran, the Rev. McCorcle of Benton, Missouri, and the Rev. J.W. Jordon of Chaffee, Missouri.

-- Sharon K. Sanders