Past Pages for Friday, July 18, 2014

140 Years Ago

Mark Twain is reported as having taken Coggin’s comet to run as a show. A portion of the comet’s train will be in Carson the same time as the circus…

130 Years Ago

The door to the “crazy cell” was left unlocked in Esmeralda county jail in Hawthorne. Clark, the alleged horse thief, was confined in that cell and left. The Sheriff has not announced his escape so far… and does not appear to be looking.

110 Years Ago

Two Comstock boys, Bayard Bulmer and Harry Dexter came home by foot from Sacramento. They were blockaded in San Francisco by the railroad strike. They had a good walk home and reported very little hardship. (Enterprise)

70 Years Ago

Adolph Hitler’s half-brother Alois, was killed during an Allied air raid on Munich. He was not a public figure in Germany and not active in the Nazi party.

50 Years Ago

A lady known as “Whisky Lil” is helping scientists perfect a new way of identifying age. She is an American Indian mummy found in 1955 in Chimney Cave at Lake Winnemucca, Nevada. One arm was raised as if she was giving a toast and that is how she got her nickname. Using a method known as carbon-14 dating indicated the woven-bark made wrap was 2,500 years old. Dating human bones is done by dissolving minerals in bones and dated her body to be 2,500 years old.

30 Years Ago

First-time home buyers will get a chance at $134 million in low-interest mortgages at 10.98 percent interest. The 10.98 percent rate is good compared to the 14 to 15 percent rates charged for most mortgages…

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