Other days

100 YEARS AGO

June 20, 1917

FORT SMITH — Eighteen months in the penitentiary was the sentence today imposed on John Ernest, a mountaineer of Johnson county, by Judge Frank A. Youmans in the United States District Court, following Ernest’s conviction on a charge of being implicated in the theft of $6,500 from the post office at Clarksville, three years ago. Carl Kirkham, former deputy sheriff of Pulaski county, was given a similar sentence on a charge of white slavery.

50 YEARS AGO

June 20, 1967

■ Alfred Sturgeon, 22, who petitioned Federal District Court at Little Rock June 20 seeking relief from “intolerable prison conditions” that he said existed at Tucker Prison Farm, Monday petitioned the Court to provide protection for him. James E. Shock of Enola, Sturgeon’s “attorney-in-face” said in the new petition that Sturgeon’s mother had received a letter from him Saturday in which he said, “Mother I may not make it out alive the way things is looking now tonight.” Shock said he visited Sturgeon Saturday at the Prison Farm and was told by him that after filing the first petition his life was threatened.

25 YEARS AGO

June 20, 1992

■ To take literally a recent lawsuit by one of Frank Lyon Sr.’s companies, he wants the 40 story TCBY Tower off his land. “We don’t have any comment on this,” Paul Moore of the Frank Lyon Co. said Friday. On May 29, FFB Corp., which is affiliated with Lyon, filed a lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court that contends FFB has a “superior right” to land under the lobby of the TCBY Tower in downtown Little Rock. FFB is asking that Capitol Avenue Development Co., a partnership of leading Arkansas businessmen who own the TCBY Tower, vacate the land.

10 YEARS AGO

June 20, 2007

■ Unemployment in Arkansas rose slightly in May to 5.2 percent, remaining within the half- percentage point range it has maintained since November 2004, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday. The joblessness rate was 5.0 percent in April. For the past 30 months, Arkansas’ unemployment rate has stayed between 4.9 percent and 5.4 percent. Only March’s rate fell below 5 percent. “That tracks what has been going on at the U.S. level, but the [Arkansas rate] is just higher,” said Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. The U.S. unemployment rate was 4.5 percent in May.