Other days
100 YEARS AGO Aug. 14, 1921
DES ARC — Sam Gilmore, aged 38, proved himself a hero yesterday morning when he dove into White River here in an effort to rescue a drowning child. He himself drowned before he reached the child. Ralph Sears, also having noticed the child’s predicament, swam out and brought him to the shore. He was unable to reach Gilmore, however. Gilmore’s body was recovered late yesterday afternoon.
50 YEARS AGO Aug. 14, 1971
PINE BLUFF — Prosecutor Joe Holmes announced Friday that trials on four persons indicated by a Jefferson County Grand Jury is an investigation of a shortage of $92,000 in cash at Arkansas AM & N College here will be held next week. The missing money, auditors for the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee announced last fall, was in the fiscal years 1968-69 and 1969-70, while Richard S. Anderson was cashier. Dr. Lawrence A. Davis, president of AM & N, told the legislators at the time that there might have been poor financial management, but apparently no “malpractices.” Altogether, six persons were indicted after the investigation.
25 YEARS AGO Aug. 14, 1996
■ A former lawyer who received a 15-year prison sentence last June for stealing historical documents from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville now faces trial on similar charges in Little Rock. Robert Hardin Smith, 47, of North Little Rock pleaded innocent Monday to two counts of theft of property during an arraignment before Pulaski County Circuit Judge John Langston. Langston set a Nov. 26 trial for Smith, who opted not to be tried by a jury.
10 YEARS AGO Aug. 14, 2011
■ Arkansas has more robots than a person could shake a stick shift at. The state’s mechanical beings march to the tune of banjo player Tony Trischka’s album A Robot Plane Flies Over Arkansas. They include the daVinci robotic surgical system at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, a device used for such procedures as heart valve repair. At the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources in Smackover, about 40 thirdthrough sixth-graders undertook this summer’s challenge to make something of a Styrofoam cup and a little motor in a new program called Robot Zoo. “It’s all about science and math,” says museum superintendent Pam Beasley. The goggle-eyed coffee-cup robots helped teach electrical circuitry, balance and movement, some of the same problems that grownup robotics engineers work to solve. Mainly, robots encourage tinkering, Beasley says. The museum plans a “tinkering studio,” where children will be able to invent things the way they did back in the day, fooling around in Dad’s workshop.