Bound Volumes, Hometown History
June 4, 2026
90 YEARS AGO
Cornell University’s New York State veterinary college today announced the death of “R-1149” a hen which lived eight years and three months and laid 1,515 eggs. The hen’s life answered two questioned posed by scientists. 1. How long would a hen live if it were not for chicken dinners? The answer was an average of nine years. 2. How long would a hen produce eggs economically if given a chance? “R-1149” had seven years of producing and averaged more than 200 eggs annually.
The British government has ordered forty million gas masks for her civilian population. “Wings over Europe” might be wings over England. Those wings might come from Italy or from Germany, the two countries most threatening to European peace. If they came, there would be a cloud of them flying high and merely dipping to place their shots, then rising and fleeing before the anti-aircraft guns could get many of them. So there must be bomb-proof tunnels and gas masks everywhere. Those forty million gas masks are an illuminating sign of the times. Fortunately, America is still isolated enough to be remote from such peril. But even our immunity may vanish with further progress in aviation and asphyxiation, if the scientific killers are allowed to run loose.
June 1936
70 YEARS AGO
Success is a spiritual goal, the Rev. John H. Sprock, pastor of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Utica, told the graduating class at Hartwick College yesterday. “In the truest sense of the word success, ultimate termination is a spiritual goal…to win one’s soul one must have faith in the ultimate meaning of life—that means in the author of life—that means God.” He used as his text the words of Hebrews 10:39: “We are not the men to shrink back and be lost, but to have faith and so win our souls.” He said if there is one thing a college graduate should know it is “for whom and for what am I giving my life?” And, he said, “the successful person is the one who realizes that he is giving his life for God.”
June 1956
50 YEARS AGO
The 1,400 students graduating from SUCO heard author George Plimpton urge them to “follow their North Star” even though they knew they would never reach it. By striving for a goal they knew they would never attain, they would discover a new world, he said. The well-known “professional amateur” chastised the present generation for “not daring to give a damn.” “So this is the world we bequeath to you, Red Dragons, an unholy mess, and you are the only ones who can clear it up.” The SUCO student government paid Plimpton $2,000 for their graduation address.
June 1976
30 YEARS AGO
More than one-third of America’s poor children, or about 5.6 million kids, live in working poor families according to a survey of children’s well-being released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Only 14 percent of children in working poor families were born to a teenage mother, the report says. Most were born to mothers over 25 years old. Half of those surveyed lived in married, two-parent households where at least one parent, usually the father, was working year-round. The poverty standard in 1994 was $11,821 for a family of three.
June 1996
20 YEARS AGO
Nearly one in five students at two Ivy League schools say they have purposely injured themselves by cutting, burning or other methods, a disturbing phenomenon that psychologists say they are encountering more frequently. For some young people, self-abuse is an extreme coping mechanism that seems to help relieve stress. For others, it’s a way to make deep emotional wounds more visible.
June 2006
