Other days

100 YEARS AGO July 26, 1913 HOT SPRINGS - Everyone who attends the state fair here this fall will be able to go up 1,000 feet in a captive balloon. Geo. R. Belding, secretary of the State Fair Association, says so. He has arranged with C.C. Phelps of New York to bring his captive balloon here and operate it at the fair. This is the first time in the history of Arkansas that a captive balloon has been seen at a state fair. In fact it is doubtful whether a balloon of this kind has ever been operated in the state.50 YEARS AGO July 26, 1963

Rainmaker Homer Berry is awash in a sea of embarrassment over Arkansas’ drouth situation in northwest Arkansas. They’re stubborn up there, he said today, and so far haven’t agreed to call him in to break the drouth. “I could do it in three days,” he predicted. Berry, a controversial bringer of rain, doesn’t really need the northwest Arkansas work. But it’s embarrassing to him, he said, for other rainmakers to read about the dryness here. Berry makes rain, he says, by sending up clouds of silver iodide which collect moisture and fall back to earth with it. He was critical of some of the northwest Arkansas folk who think there’s something religious connected with his rainmaking operation. “I don’t use any mumbo-jumbo,” he asserted.

25 YEARS AGO July 26, 1988

The Little Rock School Board voted unanimously Monday night to cut $10.8 million and 242 positions from the 1988-89 budget, but it kept intact the 5 percent raises promised teachers 10 months ago. The action saving the raises was greeted with a standing ovation by teachers who made up about half the audience of 100. The raise was saved by reducing the district’s contingency fund by $600,000, eliminating $300,000 in supplies and cutting an additional $200,000 in personnel including the jobs of 31 library clerks, 28 certified instructional aides and one vacant assistant superintendent’s slot.

10 YEARS AGO July 26, 2003

Taking advantage of a new state law, the Osceola City Council is on the verge of approving a $5 increase in fines, all of which will go directly into the jail’s bank account. Under Arkansas Act 1188, which state lawmakers enacted last session, cities and counties can tack the additional $5 atop the fine of anyone who appears in court, regardless of whether the defendant spends a night in jail. The 56-bed Osceola jail costs more than $1 million a year to operate.