100 years ago
Aug. 14, 1918
MARIANNA-- Property valued at not less than $650,000 was destroyed by fire in Marianna this morning when 11 brick buildings in the heart of the business district were reduced to ashes. The fire originated in the third floor of the Griffis-Newbern department store, and at 5:30, when the alarm was sounded, the flames had enveloped the Griffis-Newbern store and were spreading north to the McClintock building and across the street to the Jarratt and other buildings. With a strong south wind blowing, the fire department was seriously handicapped. The flames leaped in great volumes from one building to another.
50 years ago
Aug. 14, 1968
• Marion H. Crank easily defeated Mrs. Virginia Johnson for the Democratic nomination for governor Tuesday. He received an unexpected 64 per cent of the vote. With a scarcity of local and state races in the runoff, the voting was light and the counting was surprisingly fast. The count was virtually complete by 11 p.m. Crank's victory was obvious an hour after the polls closed. His lead steadily increased, erasing Mrs. Johnson's hopes of becoming the first woman to be her party's nominee for governor. Crank's victory returned the control of the state Democratic Party to the old-order Democrats who ran it for 12 years under the governorship of Orval D. Faubus.
25 years ago
Aug. 14, 1993
FELSENTHAL-- Malcolm George doesn't know how much longer he can hold on. A relative latecomer to Felsenthal's sport fishing business, he opened George Boy's Bait Stand just in time to enjoy the last two years of a long-running boom. Now he watches helplessly as mercury contamination chokes the sport fishing business in southern Arkansas. No one knows where the metal is coming from, but it's building up to dangerous levels in game fish. Just 12 months after state health officials began warning the public not to eat fish from several lakes and streams in an eight-county area bordering Louisiana, business has nose-dived. George, 51, has watched his business fall off by a third since the warnings began.
10 years ago
Aug. 14, 2008
• A man armed with a revolver shot and killed Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney at party headquarters in Little Rock late Wednesday morning, then led police on a 34-mile chase before confronting officers, who shot and killed him less than an hour later. A member of the state Senate for a decade and the owner of three auto dealerships, Gwatney, 48, died at 3:59 p.m. at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center.
Metro on 08/14/2018