Other days
100 YEARS AGO March 19, 1924
FAYETTEVILLE — Leland Fidler, aged 17, who attempted to kill himself and his 15-year-old sweetheart, Bessie Howell at Prairie Grove, will live unless complications set in. Fidler was in poor health and according to his statement, had decided to “end it all.” He came to the Howell house Saturday night about 11 o’clock just after another youth had left the house, and asked for a glass of water. Bessie Howell, his sweetheart ,and May, her older sister, were present. As May Howell handed him the glass, young Fidler produced a revolver and, turning it to his breast, shot himself. When the bullet missed his heart by the narrowest of margins, and he remained standing, he pointed the gun at Bessie and fired. The bullet missed when May Howell struck the gun upwards. Fidler is convalescent at the Howell home.
50 YEARS AGO March 19, 1974
JONESBORO — The General Tire and Rubber Company will build a tennis ball production facility in the Jonesboro Industrial Park, company officials said Monday. The 55,000 square foot plant will be located on a 23-acre site, officials said. F. M. Tompkins, a Company vice president, said the plant should be completed by the summer of 1975 and would employ 120 persons initially.
25 YEARS AGO March 19, 1999
Bar owners and bartenders can be held liable for injuries or deaths caused by people to whom they sell alcohol, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The high court’s decision bypassed the state’s common law, which was reinforced 34 years ago by a case in which the court ruled that an accident was the result of the consumption of alcohol rather than the sale of it. Thursday’s ruling cleared the way for Pam Jackson to sue the owners of a club for allegedly serving alcohol to an intoxicated man who left the bar and caused an accident that killed her husband in Howard County in 1994. Jackson alleged that employees at the Sundowners Club knew or should have known that Kevin Holliday was extremely intoxicated and that he intended to drive his vehicle while intoxicated. Jackson sued Cadillac Cowboy Inc., which owned the Sundowners Club, but the trial court dismissed the suit at the club’s request. The law, according to court records, only extended liability for the sale of alcohol to minors.
10 YEARS AGO March 19, 2014
Enrollment in the Little Rock School District is projected to grow by about 1,000 students in the next 10 years, from 25,149 to 26,076 in the 2023-24 school year, a team of educational facility planners said Monday. But that’s only if nothing in the district changes, representatives of the Fanning-Howey Associates Inc. architecture and engineering firm of Indianapolis told the Little Rock School Board at a work session Monday. “Right now this is strictly a mathematical starting point of where we think we will be in 10 years,” Carl Baxmeyer, a planner for Fanning-Howey, said about the data from the school district, the Arkansas Department of Health, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service that was used to project the enrollment for individual schools and the district as a whole. Company representatives met with the School Board on Monday to lay the foundation for school renovation and new building recommendations that are to come in late May or early June.