150 years ago: 1875
Grand Baby, Petite Daddy: Perry Byam’s new boy baby weighs 11 1/2 pounds, about an eighth as much as its daddy.
Dutch People in Sioux County: The Holland excursionists, who went to Orange City, Sioux County, a week ago, are still there. They like the lay of the country and many of them intend to leave their locations near Pella, Iowa, and settle in that county.
Unsafe Entertainment: That dangerous amusement, walking on stilts, is becoming fashionable again among our boys. A little fellow who was navigating on a very high pair of them yesterday morning, near the old Presbyterian Church, on Fourth Street, made a misstep and fell backwards, striking on his right side on the edge of the sidewalk. He was rendered helpless by the accident for a few minutes but finally got up and retired.
125 years ago: 1900
Bell Telephone Company After the Mutual: Telephone patrons in Sioux City are watching with some interest the course of the independent telephone organization of Des Moines, the Mutual Telephone Company. It was organized six or seven years ago to compete with the Bell Company, whose prices had become exorbitant, but now there are signs that it is to meet with the fate of Sioux City’s old Home Telephone Company, which was organized for a similar purpose.
Like the Home Telephone Company, the Mutual of Des Moines accomplished its purpose and, furthermore, it was a pronounced financial success from the very first, and it now controls the bigger portion of the capital city’s business. Recently, however, suspicious steps have been taken by some of the directors of the company that look much as if a deal is being hatched to turn the Mutual company over to the Bell people and cut off competition.
Dr. M’Glumphy: Special treatment of chronic and nervous diseases of both sexes, drink habit and overfatness. Office corner Fourth and Pierce, Sioux City.
100 years ago: 1925
Man is Shot Down; Slayer Still is Free: Released from jail Friday, married Saturday and shot to death Sunday was the three-day record of Clyde Nyquist, slain at 7 o’clock Sunday evening in the stairway leading into May Burzette Bentley’s rooming house, 919 Fourth St., by a man for whom the police are making a citywide search.
Shot in the head, arm and twice in his abdomen, Nyquist died as police officers were removing him from an ambulance at a hospital a few minutes following the brawl.
The slayer, known only as “Owl Head,” made his escape over his victim’s body, darting directly across the street through the stream of early evening traffic, then running toward Virginia Street, where he leaped to the running board of a waiting automobile and drove away toward the railroad tracks.
Jacob Halfrich, who said he was attracted by the sound of a shot, was driving past in an automobile. As he looked toward the stairway, Della Anderson Nyquist, bride of the slain man, stepped to the sidewalk, pointing in the direction of the rooms above.
Just then another shot was fired and Nyquist stepped out of the doorway. Then, according to Halfrich, the bride exclaimed:
“He tried to get me and now he has shot my husband.”
Della joined her husband on the sidewalk and he sank in a pool of blood in front of the door, just as the mysterious “Owl Head” stepped out, placing his revolver in his pocket as he darted into the street.
Police officers Phillips and Kerr drove the dying man toward a hospital in the ambulance while Officers Walker, Brown and Reid began an investigation of the case. In the rooming house, where Nyquist, his bride and slayer were said to have been arguing, the officers placed in custody Claude “Tex” Bentley and his wife, May, widow of the notorious Red Burzette, bandit leader who died several years ago from wounds suffered in the gun battle with Detective James Britton, who was also slain.
The body of the slain man was taken to Westcott’s undertaking establishment pending disposition by Dr. J.H. Robbins, county coroner, who will conduct an investigation today.
In the clothing worn by Nyquist was found $27 in currency, a small amount of silver, a watch, receipts for money sent to him at the county jail at Redfield, S.D., and a note addressed to “Friend Fat,” which Nyquist is thought to have been carrying to deliver for two men still in jail at Redfield.
75 years ago: 1950
Iowa Has List of Communists: Attorney General Robert L. Larson said Wednesday the state has a list of Iowans who are communists and communist sympathizers.
He declined to reveal — even in round numbers — the size of the list, or the general location of residence of those concerned.
“I think a state check on them is being made every once in a while,” Larson commented. “They are the ones we would watch closely in case of a national emergency for sabotage and so forth.
“The state began making up the list about 10 years ago. On it are communists and others who are not in favor of our form of government. No organizations are involved.
“Almost all of the states have such lists because the Federal Bureau of Investigation will not reveal its list,” he said.
50 years ago: 1975
Sloan Neighbors Pitch in to Help Injured Farmer: Sloan, Iowa, community residents responded with compassion and hard work Monday to the plight of a neighboring farmer, Cal Linscott, 61, badly injured last Friday in a combine accident.
Some 100 men with a “convoy” of combines went to the Linscott farm, one and a half miles west of Sloan, to harvest some 500 acres of corn and soybeans Monday.
The women of the community were just as active, as they prepared and served dinner at Skien Lutheran Church for the volunteer workers.
In the meantime, there was heartwarming word Monday night from St. Vincent Hospital in Sioux City where officials reported that Linscott had shown “improvement” and was moved Monday from the intensive care unit to a private room.
Linscott’s troubles began last Thursday when his combine caught fire as he was working in the fields. The Sloan Rescue Squad put out the fire, and the combine was taken to the Linscott farm yard for repair.
Linscott and a friend were working on the machine Friday when part of the combine fell on him. He was taken to St. Vincent Hospital, some of his injuries reportedly including puncture wounds from the combine’s prongs.
25 years ago: 2000
Riverboat Inn Gets New Facelift as Holiday Inn: It’s business as usual, even though the front of the Riverboat Inn resembles nothing of its former self.
The orange Howard Johnson roof at the building on Gordon Drive is no more as the Riverboat Inn is in the transition to changing to a Holiday Inn.
The only non-operational part of the business is the restaurant and lounge, although hotel guests are provided with a continental breakfast. Heffner said there have been days the hotel has had all of their rooms filled despite the inconvenience of the remodeling.
Remodeling began about a year ago to start incorporating the standards of the Holiday Inn.
Captor’s Grandson Visits ex-POW: Twenty-nine year-old Stefan Jocher, an Italian citizen of Austrian descent, recently made a stop at the Charlie Lyon home in Anthon, Iowa. Jocher is the grandson of Josef Frener, the man who captured Lyon when his B-17 Flying Fortress was shot down in the Italian Alps during World War II.
This was Jocher’s first trip to the United States and he says it occurred quite by accident.
“Last February I bought a computer and in March I knew I would come,” he said. “It was a publicity promotion by the computer company. In this one week everybody who spent a certain amount of money in this shop got the trip. I chose Chicago as a destination because it is close to Iowa.”
After spending a night in Chicago, Jocher took the Amtrak to Omaha where Lyon and his wife, Mary Jo, picked him up and brought him to Anthon. Jocher brought with him a small piece of Lyon’s plane to give to him.
“Somebody in our village had kept it,” says Jocher. “Maybe the farmer where the plane went down inside on the farm. He kept it. Of course these planes, you know, were there in the fields. My father, he’s a musician, used some wires to make strings for his zither. So nothing remained anymore. Everybody had something.”
“It’s part of my original plane,” says Lyon. “I think it’s part of the bomb controls or bomb racks. I think it apparently has been inside to be in this condition after 50-some years.”
Lyon remembers Feb. 29, 1945, when his plane was shot down in the Italian Alps near the small town of St. Andrea.
“I knew we were going to crash. We were 25,000 feet up and we just got a direct hit with anti-aircraft. The plane just shuttered and shook,” he says. “I started to run to the escape hatch. I only got about halfway there and then centrifugal force took over I couldn’t move anymore. The next thing I knew I was just falling in space. I had teeth knocked out and a head injury. Then I pulled my ripcord. It looked to me like I was going to land in the jagged peaks of the Dolomites. I had flown over them 10 times before and I had thought, it would be something if you ever snagged your parachute in those peaks. They could never get me out. Fortunately the wind kind of caught me and brought me down so I landed up on the timber line.”
Four crew members died in the crash and six survived. Everyone went down in a different location of the slope because the plane disintegrated.
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