Other days
100 YEARS AGO March 29, 1922
EL DORADO — Porter Simmons, well known among the oil fraternity here, today was acquitted by jury in Circuit Court of a first degree charge. He was accused of killing his cousin, Jim Johnson, about two years ago. He had been at liberty since his indictment on a bond of $8,000. The jury received the case about 11 o’clock, and the verdict returned shortly after noon. Simmons’ plea was self-defense. He said that Johnson was the aggressor when he fired the fatal shot.
50 YEARS AGO March 29, 1972
PINE BLUFF — Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird hurriedly toured the Pine Bluff Arsenal Tuesday and announced that the Army has completed destruction of its stockpile of antipersonnel biological materials and weapons. Accompanied by newsmen and security personnel, Laird whipped through the facilities at the Directorate of Biological Operations on a hour-long tour. Before the tour, Glenwood B. Achorn Jr., director of the biological operations at the facility, announced that the last gallon of demilitarized waste was removed from the premises last Thursday, thus completing an extensive $12 million demilitarization program over the past seven months. The DBO facility, which represents 500 of a total 14,951 acres of the Arsenal complex, will be converted into the National Center for Toxicological Research next month to be operated by the federal Health, Education and Welfare Department’s Food and Drug Administration.
25 YEARS AGO March 29, 1997
SPRINGDALE — When a plane carrying the Arkansas Razorbacks home from their season-ending game landed Thursday night, members of the flight crew apparently were the only ones who didn’t know something was amiss. The plane was at the wrong airport. “The pilot said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Fayetteville, Arkansas,’ ” Matt Scott, a member of the Hogwild Band, recalled Friday. “Then there was a roar of people saying, ‘No, we’re not. We’re in Springdale.’ That’s when the crew got a little uptight.” The captain of the chartered Sun Pacific International flight apparently confused the two airports, landing the Boeing 727 at the Springdale Municipal Airport, 10 miles north of Fayetteville’s Drake Field, where he was supposed to land. The Springdale airport wasn’t designed for large, heavy planes. Approximately 1,200 square feet of the runway was a broken mess Friday morning, reportedly torn apart by the force of the reverse thrusters on the plane. The pilot had deployed the thrusters after the plane’s nose gear became stuck in dirt next to the runway. None of the 144 passengers — basketball players, band members, cheerleaders, staff members, alumni and seven-member flight crew — were injured.
10 YEARS AGO March 29, 2012
■ The disagreement between the state and the Little Rock School District over the establishment of publicly funded, open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County will get an airing in federal court today. U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. in August set this week’s date for arguments on a motion filed in 2010 by attorneys for the Little Rock district. The purpose, the judge said, is to hear oral arguments from the parties and decide whether to schedule an evidentiary hearing in which witnesses would be called to provide more information. The Little Rock district has accused the state of giving unconditional approval to charter schools without regard to the effect on desegregation efforts in the three traditional school districts. The district has sought summary judgment, which is a ruling based on the arguments and facts already before the judge. At stake in the legal dispute is the growth of the independently run, publicly funded charter schools in Pulaski County versus the operation of the older, district-run magnet schools and the majority-to-minority school interdistrict student transfer programs that were created to promote desegregation in the three school districts.