100 years ago
June 10, 1919
FORT SMITH -- Noah Basham, champion prison breaker of the Southwest, and Homer Long were convicted of highway robbery in the Circuit Court today and each was sentenced to six years in the penitentiary. They held up and robbed participants and spectators at a cock fight on the outskirts of the city April 6 last and were caught the next day at Fayetteville aboard a train. Basham has a record of having escaped from the Arkansas and Oklahoma penitentiaries and from several county jails in both states. He jumped overboard from a naval vessel in San Francisco and deserted the navy. After being arrested and while en route to that city in custody of an officer, he leaped from the train handcuffed and escaped.
50 years ago
June 10, 1969
• Twelve Arkansas teenagers will leave Little Rock this morning for a 40-day European tour to study the governments of five nations. Headed by Sam Kent, a social studies teacher at Hall High School, the teenagers are members of the Foreign Study League, which is sponsoring several such tours this summer. Last year, about 40 young Arkansans toured Europe as members of the League. Kent said Monday that the students, including some who have already graduated from high school will visit London, England; Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands; Compiegne, France, Unterwoossen, Germany, and Rome, Italy. The Arkansans will meet several similar groups in New York Wednesday when they will leave for Southampton, England, by ship. After the tour, they will fly back to New York from Rome. The expenses of the trip are paid by the student's parents.
25 years ago
June 10, 1994
• Severe thunderstorms and high winds swept through Arkansas again Thursday, leaving more than 20,000 homes and businesses without power, and lightning ignited a fire at a funeral home. Lightning struck the roof of the Beasley-Wood Funeral Home in Mena, starting a fire about 8:45 a.m., said Capt. John Puckett of the Mena Fire Department. No one was working at the funeral home when it caught fire and no corpses were in the building, Puckett said. About half of the 52-year-old business was destroyed, but records were salvaged, Puckett said. No damage estimate was available. Firefighters put it out in about three hours.
10 years ago
June 10, 2009
• Law-enforcement agencies described the level of criminal activity as "routine" at the four-day Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival that drew up to 15,000 people to Mulberry Mountain. Several law-enforcement agencies combined to arrest or ticket at least 100 people at the festival, held in Arkansas for the first time since it was formed in Kansas in 2004, Franklin County Sheriff Reed Haynes said. "We're not done yet," he said. The majority of the arrests were drug-related, though there were several incidents of theft and drunken driving, Haynes said. One woman was arrested with marijuana and $4,000 in cash, though officials could only speculate that she was responsible for some of the marijuana being sold inside the festival, authorities said. Haynes said he expects more arrests because some people fled into the Ozark National Forest that borders the 650-acre site. He said U.S. marshals know the names of those who fled and will be serving warrants.
Metro on 06/10/2019