Other days

100 YEARS AGO Oct. 31, 1923

■ The Arkansas State School for the Blind has received approximately $700 worth of books this year from the American Printing House for the Blind, the nationally supported institution for supplying the blind of the country with standard textbooks, music and other printed matter, according to Mrs. George Thornburgh, superintendent. The annual quota for Arkansas is between $1,000 and $1,200 worth of books, so that the present supply, which is being catalogued for use by the librarian at the school, represents approximately one-half of the year’s assignment.

50 YEARS AGO Oct. 31, 1973

■ Robert Weldon Bowerman… of Wichita, Kan., has been charged by the FBI with the December 29, 1971, armed robbery of $34,500 from Tanglewood Branch of Union National Bank at Little Rock… Mike Seymore, a former Little Rock policeman and manager of the Tanglewood Branch, told the police the day of the robbery that the robber had ordered him at gun point to lie on the floor. The robber also told two tellers, Mrs. Barbara Orellano and Mrs. Virginia Roe, that he had tossed a bomb onto the roof of the building, that he was monitoring the police radio and would explode the bomb if the robbery were reported.

25 YEARS AGO

Oct. 31, 1998

MONTICELLO — A sixmonth investigation has led to the disruption of an alleged methamphetamine ring that operated between California and Monticello, authorities said Friday. Lt. John Dement, of the Monticello police, said Orange County, Calif., sheriff’s deputies learned of the alleged drug operation Wednesday after they arrested Eddie Rabb, 41, in San Clemente, Calif. Dement said officers learned that Rabb, who had homes in California and Monticello, was allegedly trafficking the drug to Arkansas. Dement said Orange County officers seized about 6 pounds of methamphetamine from Rabb’s home there, along with $60,000 in cash and about $100,000 in stolen property, in what local officials called the town’s largest methamphetamine seizure.

10 YEARS AGO Oct. 31, 2013

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Scientists have found a planet way out in the cosmos that’s close in size and content to Earth — an astronomical first. But the rocky world is so close to its sun that it’s at least 2,000 degrees hotter than here, almost certainly too hot for life. Astrophysicists reported Wednesday in the journal Nature that the exoplanet Kepler-78b appears to be made of rock and iron just like Earth. They measured the planet’s mass to determine its density and content. It’s actually a little bigger than Earth and nearly double its mass, or quantity of matter. Kepler-78b is in the Cygnus constellation hundreds of light-years away. It orbits its sun every 8½ hours, a mystery to astronomers who doubt it could have formed or moved that close to a star. They agree the planet will be sucked up by the sun in a few billion years, so its time remaining, astronomically speaking, is short.