Other days
100 YEARS AGO Oct. 16, 1923
PINE BLUFF — A loss of approximately $44,000 was caused by fire of unknown origin last night at 11:45 o’clock at the Pine Bluff Cotton Compress Company’s plant just east of the city. The blaze was checked by the sprinkler system, which protects the big plant, but about 275 bales of cotton will have to be salvaged, according to J. P. Dally, local manager.
50 YEARS AGO Oct. 16, 1973
CHELSEA, Mass. — More than 1,000 homeless persons Monday sought food, clothing and shelter as National Guardsmen patrolled the smoldering ruins of 18 blocks of this industrial satellite of Boston. An estimated 20 percent of the city was burned in the Sunday inferno that affected an estimated 900 buildings. The fire leveled the vast area of tenements, warehouses and factories, turning the rundown section that sits across the Mystic River from Boston into wasteland. … Mayor Philip Spelman said 100 homes and apartments were destroyed and others were badly damaged, leaving more than 1,000 persons in 200 families homeless.
25 YEARS AGO Oct. 16, 1998
■ An investigation into the death of a Jacksonville nursing home resident led state officials to order Fort Smith-based Beverly Enterprises Inc. on Thursday to close the facility by Nov. 13. The state Department of Human Services decided to revoke the license of the Beverly Health and Rehabilitation Center after investigators found staff reacted improperly when the resident pulled out his feeding tube twice on Sept. 12 and 13, said Joe Quinn, a department spokesman. The patient, Howard Holderfield, 58, of Sherwood, died Sept. 14 at 3:20 a.m. at the Rebsamen Regional Medical Center emergency room in Jacksonville, less than nine hours after nursing home staff had him transferred there, Pulaski County Corner Mark Malcolm said Thursday. … Besides canceling the facility’s license, state officials also fined Beverly $5,000, the agency’s maximum legal fine.
10 YEARS AGO Oct. 16, 2013
CONWAY — A Little Rock law firm filed seven lawsuits Tuesday on behalf of 84 Mayflower-area residents against Exxon Mobil Corp. and others in connection with the March 29 oil spill in the Faulkner County town. Plaintiffs in the lawsuits, filed in Faulkner County Circuit Court, are grouped according to the residents’ locations and their experiences after the company’s Pegasus pipeline ruptured, spilling an estimated 210,000 gallons of heavy crude oil into the Northwoods subdivision, ditches and a cove of Lake Conway. Represented in the lawsuits are two groups of people who lived on evacuated North Starlite Road in the subdivision, two groups of subdivision residents whose homes were not among those evacuated, one group living near the pipeline in Mayflower and two groups who live on or near the cove. … The lawsuits also claim Exxon Mobil knew no later than 1988 that the electronic resistance welded pipe used in the Pegasus line had inherent manufacturing deficiencies and that such defects contributed to the March spill.