Other days
100 YEARS AGO Dec. 24, 1921
■ Cora Shipp, aged about 23, who has been arrested several times, bids fair to become the city’s champion jail breaker, provided she continues at the rate she has maintained since her arrest Tuesday night. Cora has escaped from the county jail twice and at latest reports is still missing. Cora escaped both times by means of a blanket rope, which she [used to] swing from a second floor window to the ground. Her first escape Wednesday night, just before midnight, was not discovered until early Thursday morning. She was arrested in North Little Rock late yesterday and returned to jail, but escaped again in less than three hours.
50 YEARS AGO Dec. 24, 1971
■ A fire about midnight Wednesday destroyed a partially completed residence at 1716 Alberta Drive, the Fire Department said. The fire started inside the house, but the cause was not known. The loss was estimated at $20,000. Two firemen — John Sams and B. L. Kinder — were burned but not hurt seriously. They remained at the scene and were treated Thursday for second degree burns, a Fire Department spokesman said. A house next door at 1722 Alberta, occupied by Mr. and Mrs. H. D. Copeland, was damaged by the fire.
25 YEARS AGO Dec. 24, 1996
■ BENTONVILLE — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has fired two employees at a San Antonio retail store for hiding popular Tickle Me Elmo dolls so they could have the first shot at buying them. Wal-Mart spokesman Dale Ingram said the employees, whom the nation’s largest retailer would not identify, had violated a company policy that every employee is told of during initial training. … “Elmo, obviously, is a very, very unique case,” Ingram said, adding that workers can buy goods at Wal-Mart, “but in this case it is clear that there was very strong customer demand for the Elmo doll. In this case, the associates ignored the customer demand and purchased it themselves. One of them put an ad in the New Braunfels paper offering to sell the Elmo doll for a significant profit.” Gerald Smith, manager at the San Antonio Wal-Mart, said the two employees were fired for practice known as “understocking.”
10 YEARS AGO Dec. 24, 2011
BARLING — A member of the Barling Board of Directors is trying to gather 929 signatures on a petition to call a vote on whether to allow alcoholic beverage sales in the city, which has been dry since World War II. Bruce Farrar said he has collected about 850 signatures from registered voters in the past six months. Barling, population 4,649, is losing revenue to neighboring Fort Smith and Fort Chaffee, where liquor is sold, he said. “We have alcohol on our city limits east, west and south,” Farrar said. “We have restaurants that won’t come into Barling because we don’t allow liquor sales. Just selling liquor is not the intent of this petition. It’s to entice other people to come in and build restaurants and what have you. It would increase revenue to the city.”