100 years ago
Jan. 2, 1921
• A more economical and effective manner of building and maintaining roads in Pulaski county would be to have all the districts thrown into one, according to a general report filed yesterday with the Good Roads Bureau of the Board of Commerce by Col. John R. Fordyce, consulting engineer. If one single district were formed, according to the report, the assessments would be more equitable and the rich lands served by improved highways would bear a just proportion of the cost.
50 years ago
Jan. 2, 1971
• The Young Americans for Freedom, a politically conservative group of young persons, has dropped rock-bank entertainment and dancing at its coffeehouse, The Joint Effort, at Broadway and Willow Street -- in North Little Rock, Mayor Laman said Thursday. The YAF uses the building, owned by the Urban Renewal Agency, with the consent of Laman. The mayor said that he had granted YAF the use of the building without asking the Agency for approval. "I hadn't thought about a lease, no one seems to care about it but you," he told a reporter. "I suppose they'll give the city permission to use it," Laman said. He added that he had no plans to ask permission.
25 years ago
Jan. 2, 1996
• The season's first big snow hit the state today as temperatures plunged overnight and a storm rolled in from the west. As dusk turned to night, the northwestern part of the state saw the first flurries touch down. The snow was expected to continue through the day today. Authorities warned motorists to take extra care on the glazed roads. Forecasters expected 6 to 8 inches in northern and western Arkansas. By 10:30 p.m., 2 inches had already fallen in Harrison, Eureka Springs, Berryville and Huntsville, according to local authorities and the National Weather Service.
10 years ago
Jan. 2, 2011
• When Beebe Police Department Capt. Eddie Cullum went to work Saturday morning, he was expecting to oversee the fallout of arrests that typically occur on New Year's Eve. Instead, he got birds. Lots of them. Beginning about 11 p.m. Friday, the Police Department switchboard lit up with calls from residents complaining that scores of birds were falling dead from the sky. "We were just inundated with calls from people screaming into the phone," Cullum said. "Some of them thought it was the end of the world, that birds were raining down on their houses. ... There was a bit of a panic." During the final hour of 2010, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission officers estimate that thousands of dead and dying birds, mostly blackbirds, fell from the sky and blanketed a mile-long stretch of the city between U.S. 367 and the Arkansas State University campus.