Bound Volumes, Hometown History
December 19, 2024
110 YEARS AGO
Local News – Ice at the Electric Pond at East End is about eight inches thick and that at the Plains Lake six inches. If the cold weather continues, it will not be many days before the Ice Company will be marking out its fields and preparing the annual harvest. The skaters are already improving the opportunity.
While doubtless some provision should be made for the young to coast, yet the practice of allowing quite young children to coast down such streets as Grove and Fairview is a dangerous one and sooner or later someone is going to get under the feet of the horses or be hit by an automobile. The practice should be stopped before a serious accident occurs.
December 1914
70 YEARS AGO
Dr. Albert B. Sabin, one of the nation’s leading virus investigators reports there now is evidence suggesting that a non-virulent form of the polio virus may exist in nature. This may be an important factor in explaining the fact that the vast majority of human beings develop immunity to polio without suffering paralysis. Dr. Sabin told about laboratory development of strains of non-virulent or “tamed” polio virus, from virus that was originally highly paralytic to test animals. These tamed strains have been found capable of producing signs of polio immunity in chimpanzees and a few human volunteers. Dr. Sabin said that eventually it may be possible to develop an anti-polio vaccine employing the laboratory-developed, non-virulent virus. Some scientists believe that a vaccine made of living but modified polio virus could produce more potent immunity that a vaccine made of chemically killed virus. The vaccine developed by Jonas F. Salk of the University of Pittsburgh, and now undergoing nationwide appraisal, is of the latter type.
December 1954
50 YEARS AGO
After nearly thirty years on the Oneonta Parks and Recreation Commission, E.C. “Dutch” Damaschke, has resigned and will retire as of December 31, 1974. Damaschke has been chairman of the board since its inception in 1945. “You can tell the world that I enjoyed every moment of it,” the 81-year-old Damaschke wrote in a letter to Mayor James Lettis. Damaschke is a retired 50-year employee of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad was named to head the board in 1945 by then Mayor Dr. Alexander F. Carson. During the administration of former Mayor Albert S. Nader, the city’s athletic stadium in Neawha Park was named in his honor.
December 1974
30 YEARS AGO
At the end of 1992, 442,000 children were living in out-of-home care, a 9 percent increase from 1990 and a 69 percent increase over 1982. The median age of children in care was 8.6 years old in 1990, compared to 12.6 years in 1982. Of those children, 39.3 percent were white, 40.4 percent were black, and 11.8 percent were Hispanic. The numbers for minorities had increased since 1982, but dropped for whites.
December 1994
20 YEARS AGO
Bring a fresh approach to teaching social studies with the “Using Historical Buildings to Teach Social Studies” will be the goal of a January 24, 2005, presentation by Cynthia Falk, assistant professor of material culture at the State University of Oneonta and the Cooperstown Graduate Program. The program which focuses on the construction materials, techniques, style, floor plan, circulation and room use of houses, demonstrates how these aspects can be incorporated into social studies curricula. Flak will explain how historical houses in the region can be used to examine migration, authority and power, as well as changing needs over time.
December 2004
