Other days

100 YEARS AGO

Oct. 6, 1921

TEXARKANA — Bert Qualls, a farmer living about nine miles east of the city, was held for the Miller county Grand Jury on a charge of making “wildent whiskey” on his farm, following a hearing in Municipal Court today. Qualls is said to have escaped when the still was raided and two other men captured several weeks ago. It was said he left the country and remained away until a few weeks ago, returning home only after he had satisfied himself that the officers were not certain that he was the man who escaped when the raid was made.

50 YEARS AGO

Oct. 6, 1971

■ A man with a gun bound the hands and feet of the woman attendant at the Shell self-serve gasoline station at 3100 John F. Kennedy Boulevard about 10:40 p.m. Monday and fled with about $75 from the cash register, Chief of Police Reo Bowman said Tuesday. Susan L. Matthews…said the man, about 25, came into the station about 8 p.m., drank a soft drink, and left. He returned about 9:30 p.m. and talked to her for about an hour. When she opened the cash drawer to put money away from a customer, he drew the gun and told her to put the money in a brown paper bag. He…forced her into a back room, where he bound her with shoestrings. He grabbed the money and fled as she loosened the strings and called for help. Two men nearby heard her and called the police.

25 YEARS AGO

Oct. 6, 1996

CONWAY — Every now and then something happens that has one checking to make sure the laws of probability are still on the books. Take, for example, the chances that two girls living in the same neighborhood would both pick up precious gems at a public diamond mine — two of the largest found this year — within a month of each other. It happened. Stephanie Leber, 11, of Conway went to the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro on Sept. 29 with her parents and two sisters. While her family was digging for gems, Stephanie reached down and found a shiny stone in the dirt. Park officials later determined it was a 3.22-carat white diamond, valued at $1,000 to $2,000 uncut and perhaps several times that if cut properly. Just weeks earlier, Stephanie had been admiring a stone found by Blaklea Harrod, 8, who lives down the road.

10 YEARS AGO

Oct. 6, 2011

■ The discovery of a large set of fossilized dinosaur tracks by gypsum miners in Miller County this summer has kept University of Arkansas geoscientists busy recording what are believed to be the first footprints of three-toed dinosaurs in the state. In the early 1980s, tracks of sauropod dinosaurs had been found near Nashville. Scientists also had wondered if theropods — a group of larger dinosaurs that had three main weight-bearing toes and which included the species Tyrannosaurus Rex — had ever roamed those parts, or elsewhere for that matter.