1994 (10 years ago)
"Sprint Communications' 'Instant Foncards' will be the first of the prepaid [telephone] cards to hit the Roanoke area."
Virginia Tech was picked to finish second in the Big East football conference.
1979 (25 years ago)
Thomas Shilling of Salem received his Purple Heart for wounds suffered in World War I.
A man and woman from Maryland were arrested for burglarizing Police Chief David Hooper's house.
Workers laying sewer pipe at the Eaton Corp. plant in Salem discovered an American Indian skeleton.
The Botetourt Cannery closed from lack of use.
1954 (50 years ago)
"A community sing and talent show sponsored by the Department of Parks and Recreation last week at Jordan Park [on Hollins Road] was attended by nearly 300 persons."
"Movement of traffic on most of Roanoke's one-way streets in the downtown business area will be reversed Saturday at midnight. . . . Veteran traffic officers fear [the change] is going to cause drivers a lot of headaches."
1904 (100 years ago)
"The heavy downpour of rain, accompanied by a frolic of wind . . . caused a swirling storm, which did considerable damage to orchards, gardens, truck patches and corn fields . . . The man with the good roof and well cleaned gutters managed to pull through; the other fellow didn't."
In police court, "two young men who had engaged in a pugilistic encounter on the 'avenoo' were fined $5 each. They each had a black eye and were wearing black patches over the injured organs."
1894 (110 years ago)
"Among the trees in the courthouse yard is a beautiful aspen, which has become historic. During the stormy times of the sixties when Northern soldiers were stationed in Salem . . . in their idle moments the soldiers carved their initials on the tree. . . . Now many of these same letters can be deciphered high up among the upper branches far out of reach."
"W.H. Ruthrauff on Saturday caught a few grasshoppers on his farm [in Salem], and, putting them in a box, sent them to the Blacksburg College so as to obtain some information regarding the pests."
