Other days

100 YEARS AGO Dec. 17, 1918

■ The annual report of Dr. William P. Parks, superintendent of the Hot Springs Reservation, showed a substantial increase in the business of the bathhouses and the number of visitors to the resort as compared with last year. The number of paid baths for the present year was 60 per cent greater and the gain in net profit was over $11,000 more than the preceding year. It is estimated that 140,000 persons visited Hot Springs during the year. The reservation, which now contains 911 acres, was set aside by the government in 1833. It includes Hot Springs, North, West and Sugar Loaf mountains, and Whittington Lake park.

50 YEARS AGO

Dec. 17, 1968

■ The six electors of the American Party in Arkansas went to the state Capitol Monday morning and ceremonially ended the state’s long Democratic tradition in presidential elections. They officially cast the state’s six electoral votes for George C. Wallace of Alabama, who carried Arkansas in the general election November 5. They gave their votes to Curtis E. LeMay for vice president. All the electors read little prepared statements about what the election meant to them. It ended with Mrs. Virginia Johnson, who was not an elector, reading an emotional statement for the group. Her statement said they were voting for “the little judge from Alabama, whose courageous stand reawakened the sleeping spirit of 10 million Americans, whose ringing words have shocked this nation into the realization that the republic brought forth by our founding fathers is in danger.”

25 YEARS AGO

Dec. 17, 1993

BEEBE — There will be no more Bibles offered at the Arkansas State University at Beebe campus because of a recent complaint, Chancellor W.H. Owen Jr. says. The Gideons will not be allowed back on the campus in White County, Owen said Wednesday, although the organization “for years” had passed out literature and Bibles at the school. “I always told them they could come until I got a complaint,” Owen said. Owen would not say who made the ASU-Beebe complaint.

10 YEARS AGO

Dec. 17, 2008

■ A second facility used to store and dispose of discarded water used by natural gas drillers can no longer accept the wastewater, the director of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality said Tuesday. A property owner reported seeing dead fish on his property near the Griffithville disposal site operated by Searcy-based Central Arkansas Disposal, said Teresa Marks, director of the Department of Environmental quality. After investigating, the department issued an emergency order Friday after an inspection found a “large unlined, unpermitted waste treatment reservoir,” being filled through an underground pipe from the licensed facility, the emergency order states. On Dec. 3, the department closed a facility near Carlisle for improperly applying the water onto farmland.