100 years ago
Oct. 18, 1923
• The Missouri Baptist General Association concluded its convention in Poplar Bluff. Among the resolutions it passed was its opposition to the theory of evolution, or as it was called by some then, “monkey theology.”
The resolution puts the organization on record as standing firmly behind fundamentals, receiving the Genesis account of creation, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the personality of the Holy Spirit and supporting the traditions of orthodoxy.
• George H. Windsor of Poplar Bluff was one of several city residents who was able to hear former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George speak on the radio last night (Oct. 17). Windsor said he heard Lloyd George’s speech as voluminous and clear as if he was actually present in that room. Even the applause of Lloyd George’s auditors and the rattle of dishes in the banquet room could be heard, Windsor said.
• Morrison Plumbing and Sheet Metal Company offers to purchase live mice from residents for 5-cents each.
“If any person has a mouse which they think too much of to sell for 5-cents, tell ’em to keep their rodents,” Mr. Morrison said today. “We want only the mice that other people don’t want, and only 25 of them.”
He would not say what he was going to do with them.
“That’s a mystery,” he said.
75 years ago
Oct. 18, 1948
• Whiskey truck recovered after hijackers kidnap driver on Highway 60, 15 miles west of Poplar Bluff. The incident occurred Oct. 7. The truck was found yesterday in St. Louis, missing its $9,000-load of whiskey.
• A killing frost swept through Southeast Missouri last night (Oct. 17), when the mercury tumbled to 25 degrees. In some cases water froze firmly, with one resident on Grand Avenue saying a tub of water froze ice a quarter of an inch thick.
The killing frost is about two weeks earlier than normal and usually occurs near the end of October. Two years ago in 1946, it didn’t occur until Nov. 12.
• Samuel Jackson Neill, 54, a printer for the Star-Times in St. Louis, died at 8:20 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 16, at the Poplar Bluff Hospital from injuries received in an accident on Highway 67 two days earlier (Oct. 14).
Neill was headed to Little Rock to meet his wife when he lost control of his car and it overturned three times on a curve near Silva. Neill suffered a fractured skull and a broken back in the crash and never regained consciousness before his death.
50 years ago
Oct. 18, 1973
• Five men have been elected to three-year terms as members of the Greater Poplar Bluff Area Chamber of Commerce. They are Harry Blackwell, owner of the Blackwell Auto Auction; Tom Cash from the Missouri Division of Employment Security; local attorney Jasper Edmundson; Don Wandel, manager of J.C. Penney in Poplar Bluff; and the Rev. Vernon Kneir, pastor of Grace United Methodist Church.
The new directors take office Jan. 1, 1974.
• A head-on collision at 4:25 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 17, killed a Malden man and two teenage sisters and severely injured the sisters’ mother and three others. The accident occurred on U.S. Highway 62, one mile south of Malden.
Dead are Charles Ray Cox, 32, Janet Mills, 17, and Nancy Mills, 14, while Lucille Florence Mills, 46, was critically injured. Seriously hurt are Irene Richardson, 60, of Malden, Jesse Wesley Lunback, 33, of Portageville and James Harrison White, 21 of Parma.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol reports Cox’s vehicle crossed the center line and struck a truck operated by Lunbeck.