MID-SOUTH MEMORIES

25 years ago — 1998

NASHVILLE – The state Department of Transportation plans to start working on widening sections of Interstate 55 in South Memphis and Germantown Parkway near Wolfchase Galleria during the next year. The two Shelby County projects are among 92 Tennessee projects comprising a $1.2 billion state transportation budget presented to the General Assembly Thursday by Gov. Sundquist’s administration.

50 years ago — 1973

City councilmen will be asked today to approve a three-part package that would increase the number of squad cars on the streets, pay for new policemen and subsidize the city’s bus service. Under the package, a modified version of one offered Feb. 28 by Mayor Wyeth Chandler, the council would dip into revenue-sharing funds to: allocate $285,000 to help the financially troubled Memphis Transit Authority; authorize the police department to increase its fleet by 62 squad cars and replace 216 of the 298-car fleet; pay salaries of 86 policemen who complete training late next year or now in training.

75 years ago — 1948

Construction of a $491,584 cancer research center at the University of Tennessee here, recently announced, moved a step nearer yesterday. In Washington, the advisory council of the National Cancer Institute, a government agency, formally recommended the local expenditure as part of the government’s proposed $10,000,000 fight against cancer.

100 years ago — 1923

JACKSON, Tenn. – A recheck tonight of the dead and injured as a result of last night’s tornado in the vicinity of Pinson and Deanburg, Tenn., shows that 16 are known to have been killed and at least 73 injured.

125 years ago — 1898 WASHINGTON – The Commercial’s Washington correspondent gets a report from high official source as to the plans and ideas of the administration. That plan seems to be a compromise and a tentative recognition of the United States and Spain that there is an island in the sea known as Cuba upon which disorder exists, and which will receive a measure of liberty equivalent to that enjoyed by Canada.

THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL FILES March 13, 1956: C.N. Taylor, left, chairman of Ford Motor Company’s Memphis community relations committee, presented a 1956 Thunderbird V-8 engine and Ford-o-matic transmission to the Shelby County Board of Education for use in the vocational department of Whitehaven High School. Tom G. Bell, right, industrial education supervisor at Whitehaven, accepted for the board. Admiring one of the engines were Jimmy Easley, second from left, and Wiley Childs, both seniors.