125 years
December 4, 1898
Kerr Carey, the rural mail carrier for Orange Township, will enter upon his duties December 15, making his first delivery and collection on that day. If the experiment proves to be a success, other townships will be given rural delivery. He will leave the post office in this city about 8:30, after all the morning mails are in and expects to return about 2:30 in the afternoon. The salary is placed at $300. Farmers along the route will be expected to install boxes into which the mail can be placed.
100 years
December 4, 1923
At the regular meeting of the Visiting Nurses Association held yesterday afternoon, the following officers were re-elected: Mrs. J.E. Wells, president; Mrs. E.T. Custenborder, vice president; Mrs. G.E. Wilkinson, financial secretary; Mrs. Urban Doorley, secretary, and Mrs. R.C. Comstock, treasurer.
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Excitement prevailed about the city hall at Wapakoneta last evening, when 18 gypsies were detained until a satisfactory settlement was made for damages after their Pierce Arrow machine struck a Ford coupe about a mile and a half south of Botkins. The latter car belonged to Marion Hemmert, freight agent at Botkins.
75 years
December 4, 1948
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Busse today announced their purchase of the Stang slaughter house and farm, located at the intersection of State Routes 25 and 274, between Anna and Botkins.
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Directors of the blood bank program for Shelby County repeated their appeal today for donors to donate when the bloodmobile from the Columbus blood center visits Sidney on Dec. 8. The local center will be located at the Masonic Temple and the quota will be 100 pints. This will be the first of eight collections to be made here over the next year.
50 years
December 4, 1973
COLUMBUS – Oren Dewey, president of the Central Ohio Retail Gasoline Dealers Association, said today many Central Ohio service stations would comply with President Nixon’s energy conservation plan and close for the weekends. Dewey said as many as 90 percent of the stations would be closed from 9 p.m. tonight through midnight Sunday.
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Motorists throughout Shelby County and those traveling on Interstate 75 made it through a “gasless” weekend without major consequence. With few exceptions, station proprietors and employees had a free Sunday as stations were closed throughout the day and evening.
25 years
December 4, 1998
PITTSBURGH (AP) – In 2020, the fashionably wired mother of three will make no ordinary trip to the grocery store. After scanning her cupboards, she will recite a list into a microphone built into her eyeglasses. The items will be translated into text and appear on a computer screen built into the lenses. Inside the store, the woman’s identification ring will broadcast her buying habits to the store computer, which will beam back discount prices to the monitor in her eyeglasses.
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RUSSIA – Although the weather has been more like October than December, one sure sign that Christmas is just around the corner – at least in Russia – is the opening of Kringle’s Holiday Farm. The Francis family has always loved to celebrate Christmas. So, in 1990, they decided to plant 1,000 trees so they could share their enthusiasm for the holiday with others.
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Sidney High School members of the Academic Competition team were finalists in the 1998 Bowling Green State University Quiz Bowl held at BGSU. Forty-five teams from Michigan, Wisconsin and Kentucky participated in this annual competition. Sidney High School was 6-1 in the round robin and seeded 10th in the finals. Team members for Sidney High School were Andy Thompson, Logan Miller, Jon Elsner, Adam Pellman, Rahul Sate, and Andy Holt. The adviser for the team is Lee Miller.
These news items from past issues of the Sidney Daily News are compiled by the Shelby County Historical Society (937-498-1653) as a public service to the community. Local history on the Internet! www.shelbycountyhistory.org. Visit the Sidney Daily News website, www.sidneydailynews.com to read the rest of the week’s columns.
