Other days

100 YEARS AGO

Feb. 1, 1920

HOT SPRINGS — Assistant Secretary of the Interior Belding Hopkins today broke ground for the new free bathhouse the government will erect at Reserve and Spring streets, which, when completed, will cost about $200,000.

50 YEARS AGO

Feb. 1, 1970

STUTTGART — Charles Brown, a Little Rock lawyer, said Saturday that inmates in the state’s prisons should work to help earn a portion of the prison budget. Speaking at a Jaycee awards banquet, Brown said, “We must institute a work-as-you-stay plan and abandon the playas-you-go plan of prison reform.” He said rehabilitation in the prisons was acceptable if it was placed “on an incentive basis.”

25 YEARS AGO

Feb. 1, 1995

■ Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey said Tuesday the city may consider kicking in some money to defray rent costs for the Main Street skywalk to end a standoff between a downtown improvement district and the state. The skywalk that stretches over Sixth Street has been closed since Dec. 31, when the state’s lease on the skywalk expired. The state had paid $1 a year in rent in 1994, plus $5,000 for a set of fire doors and $2,800 in insurance. Metrocentre Improvement District No. 1, a special district created by the city to revitalize downtown, paid for the skywalk to be built in 1988 at the request of Main Street Ventures, then owner of Main Street Mall.

10 YEARS AGO

Feb. 1, 2010

■ Two professors from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville are working in Haiti, measuring the impact of the Jan. 12 magnitude-7 earthquake amid continuing efforts by humanitarian agencies. It’s crucial to complete research quickly after earthquakes occur so that accurate data can be collected before the ground slowly shifts and settles, said Brady Cox and Glen Mattioli. “It’s going to be rough,” Cox, a civil-engineering professor, said Wednesday as he prepared for the week-long trip. “We’re all nervous about it, safetywise. And the people are really hurting. It’s difficult to see that.” Cox will work with seven other researchers as part of a Geo-engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance, or GEER team, funded by the National Science Foundation to explore how the shifting of earth affected different types of ground and the buildings anchored there. The data could be used in the country’s rebuilding efforts if the nation opts to adopt a quake-sensitive building code, which has helped to reduce fatalities in other regions prone to land shifts, he said.