40 Years Ago
President Reagan has approved a series of measures, including pre-emptive strikes and reprisals designed to get the upper hand on terrorism worldwide, administration officials revealed. One of the key elements of the policy is an effort to switch from defensive action to offensive, partly by increasing the ability of U.S. operatives to gather intelligence in order to stop terrorist activities before they occur. While the U.S. government has been increasingly concerned with terrorism for several years, new impetus…
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135 Years Ago
The Local News—In excavating the cellar for the Bundy building, a Canadian Sou (coin) was found several feet below the surface. It was well preserved, and though bearing no date, must be very old. L.H. Blend has it.
The organ grinder, as genuine a harbinger of spring as the robin, made his appearance here on Wednesday. He was afterward arrested for cruelty to a boy in his company, but the justice discharged him.
Louise Arnot and company will begin a…
50 Years Ago
April Fools’ Day did not go unheralded in Oneonta. A bomb scare in Tommy’s Place on West Broadway forced proprietor Tommy Pondolfino to close his establishment early last night but the promised explosion never happened.
The motive behind the bomb scare, Pondolfino suspects was a late night April Fools’ prank. A waitress at the bar received a call around 10:50 p.m. last night from a man who warned that the bomb would detonate within half an hour. Pondolfino contacted…
70 YEARS AGO
As the onetime Ulster & Delaware Railroad prepares to dismantle and pack up its last passenger train, the children of the late William H. Hickok, for 48 years a conductor on the line, are also packing up the possessions in his home at 88 Elm Street. The house has been sold to Mr. and Mrs. Donald Estabrook. Dr. Benjamin B. Hickok of Michigan State University and his sister, Mrs. Charles Hampe, Thornwood, are preparing to move or store…
110 YEARS AGO
An Evening in Erin—A good 550 people of whom 518 were spectators packed Holy Name Hall last evening to the very doors and spent a happy and entertaining three hours in “The Land Where the Grass Grows Greenest.” The whole entertainment was the biggest kind of a success for the church, the performers and the audience, and everyone was happy and good natured. Everything on the program was a hit. Joseph Haggerty with his song replete with local…
135 YEARS AGO
An enthusiastic and crowded meeting of those interested in the Richfield Springs & Oneonta Railroad was held at Laurens Wednesday afternoon. President of the road, A.C. Couch was present and made a statement of the estimated cost of the road completed. The necessary bridges, cost per mile, and the cost of the rolling stock were included. He then proved to the satisfaction of the audience that the road would be a paying one from the start. The need…
90 Years Ago
As part of a concerted temperance education drive by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, nine copies of the recently published “Syllabus in Alcohol Education” have been placed in schools here, it was announced yesterday. These were distributed at the request of local teachers. Copies of this syllabus are much in demand throughout the country, said Mrs. Lula C. Walker of this city, the New York State W.C.T.U. vice-president, and copies are being distributed at the rate of 1,000…
110 YEARS AGO
Within the past few months many of the pool rooms, lunch rooms, cigar stores, candy stores, and public places of the like in Oneonta have been operating slot machines, candy cards, cigar boards and numerous other devices in which a man might get a whole lot for a nickel or a dime, but the majority of players would be more likely to get nothing. The operation of such devices is in direct violation of the law and, at…
40 Years Ago
The computer is going to summer camp. James LeMonn, a spokesman for the American Camping Association said his organization’s “Parents Guide” for 1984 lists 180 camps with computer instruction programs. The fad started about two years ago, he said. “We view it as a temporary phenomenon,” LeMonn said. He pointed out that camps providing foreign language classes were very popular in the 1950s. When schools started including more complete language programs, the camps faded. He predicts the same…
70 YEARS AGO
Violet Marie Bradshaw’s long masquerade as a man exploded dramatically in a criminal court in Columbus, Ohio after a judge sentenced her to the penitentiary for embezzlement. Arrested last summer as Vernon Bradshaw, 35, of Kenova, West Virginia, on a charge of embezzling $2,000 from an ice cream company, Violet served three days in a county jail before release on $1,500 bond. After sentencing at her trial on February 10, a man who identified himself as Patrick Bradshaw,…