Past Pages for Sunday, April 13, 2014

140 years ago

Pitiful. This afternoon there was seen on Main Street one of those sights which almost make one doubt the existence of the boasted civilization of the present age. A poor degraded woman, in a thoroughly human state of intoxication, had to be dragged through the streets by an officer and an assistant towards the jail. She presented a terrible spectacle, and one which ought to have more effect in furthering the cause of temperance than a regiment of 40-horse-power praying women, or 500 singing ladies, even if each one had a voice like a steam whistle. A short time after that arrest another unfortunate member of the demi-mode was also arrested for drunkenness ... as to prevent her walking unassisted to the prison. — Eureka Cupel, April 2.

130 years ago

Of interest to breeders. John P. Sweeney has secured the famous trotting stallion, “Gibraltar,” for the season. He is now to be seen at Sweeney’s stables and is the very perfection of horseflesh. His record is 2:221/2 and he possesses a happy faculty of fathering colts which when a year old will sell for $150 cash.

100 years ago

The guillotine has made its appearance in Mexico and a new storm of executions confronts enemies of the constitutionalists in the state of San Luis Potosi. Already the new instrument has been tested. According to General Enlalio Gutierrez, it “works splendidly.”

70 years ago

Resigning his post as state director of vocational education, R.B. Jeppson will soon move from Carson City to Reno to take up his duties as vocational director for the veteran’s administration on postwar planning.

50 years ago

Super-sensitive Las Vegas struck back today at writers who pan the desert resort as a trap for visiting gangsters. The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce issued a press release blasting Life magazine for “irresponsible, inaccurate reporting.”

30 years ago

Eleven years ago a patch of desert on North Carson Street was transformed into a hot spot for lunchers and now represents a growing community of breakfast, lunch and dinner guests. The spot occupied by McDonald’s has grown from the original 54-seat fast-food restaurant, which opened in 1973, to a 108-seat restaurant with a drive through.

Trent Dolan is the son of Bill Dolan, who wrote this column for the Nevada Appeal from 1947 until his death in 2006.