All-MIAA team ’85
25 years ago — 1993
An argument of the generations is swirling round the NAACP’s impending decision on who should replace Memphian Benjamin Hooks as head of the nation’s oldest civil rights group. The issue is not simply who will succeed Hooks but what the NAACP will be in the next decades. So black Americans who look to the organization for social and political leadership view this decision as a defining moment for civil rights.
50 years ago — 1968
Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb yesterday addressed letters to the governors of Mississippi and Arkansas requesting payments for care given needy persons from their states at City of Memphis Hospitals. City Hospitals Director Odell Horton Jr. also said that he has asked for a meeting with County Commissioner James W. Moore to discuss some payments from the county for indigent patients outside the city. Hospital officials say care costs the city yearly about $500,000 for indigent Mississippi patients and about $200,000 for Arkansas patients. About 10 to 15 per cent of medical service costs goes toward treatment of Shelby County patients.
75 years ago — 1943
LONDON — At least 35,000 Jews — the entire Jewish population of five Polish towns — have been killed by German secret police, the Polish government-in-exile reported yesterday.
100 years ago — 1918
German forces yesterday took possession of Odessa, a port of the Black Sea. Out of Odessa runs a great railway system into the wheat fields of Russia. Cargoes of grain and petroleum can now be shipped across the Black Sea into the Danube. Holding Odessa, Germany can easily take the rest of the Black Sea ports.
125 years ago — 1893
A cargo arrived in England from Egypt consisting of 20 tons of cats, being the remains of 80,000 sacred acts of ancient Egypt, each one embalmed and mummified. The cat cemetery, believed to be 4,000 years old, was discovered by a farmer at Beni-Hassan. In England, some of the cats brought five pounds apiece.