Other days

100 YEARS AGO

May 18, 1923

ARKADELPHIA—The annual debate between State Teachers’s College and Henderson-Brown College, held here last night, was won by the latter school by a 2-to-1 decision of the judges. The question debated was, “Resolved, That Employers Should Abandon the Principles of the Open Shop.” Henderson-Brown upheld the negative. The winning team was composed of Robert Hood and Louis Smith, both of Russellville. State Teacher’s team was F. H. Herndon and Justin Williams.

50 YEARS AGO

May 18, 1973

MARSHALL—The Marshall Jaycees will sponsor the Buffalo River National River Canoe Race, the first of its kind in the state, beginning at 8 a.m. Sunday, June 3. Jaycee President Darvin Treat said the race would have categories of men’s double, women’s double, man’s single and mixed. The beginning point will be the launch area at Gilbert, 12 miles northwest of Marshall, and the finishing point will be the Buffalo River State Park, about 20 miles downriver.

25 YEARS AGO

May 18, 1998

ATKINS —Authorities found the third suspect in a Dardanelle bank robbery early Saturday, but he got away. A state police helicopter using a heat-sensing device surprised the man about 3 a.m. on railroad tracks near Atkins, officials said. Two men armed with handguns got away with cash from a Bank of Dardanelle branch Friday. As they fled, a third male joined them. Two were captured within an hour on Interstate 40 near Blackwell. The third suspect fled south into a wooded area, and the hunt for him moved from Blackwell westward into Pope County about a mile from Atkins.

10 YEARS AGO

May 18, 2013

■ For the first time since January 2012, Arkansas’ civilian labor force grew, even if only by about 900 people, as the state’s April unemployment rate slipped to 7.1 percent from 7.2 percent in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. There were 1,330,900 Arkansans in the labor force in April, up from 1,330,000 in March, the bureau reported. The civilian labor force is the sum of Arkansans working and those looking for work. “That was a welcome stabilization,” said Michael Pakko, the chief economist at the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. “It was almost like the labor force had been in free fall for the past 14 months. At least it stopped falling.” The last time the state’s unemployment rate was at 7.1 percent was in December. “The improvements [in the labor force and the unemployment rate] were marginal, but they were improvements nonetheless,” Pakko said. The unemployment rate of 7.1 percent reflects hardly any improvement at all when the numbers are examined closely, Pakko said.