New York is getting the balloon craze. A number of rich men and women, especially those of the Four Hundred who are identified with automobiling, are ordering large airships from abroad capable of carrying from one to four persons, says the New York World.

With the first approach of spring New Yorkers will be seen sailing here and there over the city and its environs or setting out for more distant points. Professor A. Graham Bell and the Aero club have started the fad.

50 Years Ago, 1956

• Biggest in the low price field (120½” wheelbase)…most power too! This beautiful new Studebaker certainly is kingsize in everything but price. Its mighty 210-hp. Sweepstakes engine gives you the biggest power package in the low price field…yet it’s a thrifty successor to those Sweepstakes economy champs of the past. It’s a whopping 120½-inch wheelbase assures satin-smooth, big-car steadiness…plus all the interior roominess that six big adults could want.

• Bernard’s Super Mkt. Formerly Columbia Super Mkt., 227 Main St.: Porterhouse, T-Bone or Cube steak, 59 cents/lb.; Corned Beef, 39 cents/lb.; Rib End Pork Road, 29 cents/lb.; Smoked Shoulders, 29 cents/lb.; Fresh Spare Ribs, 29 cents/lb.; Native Chicken Breasts and Legs, 59 cents/lb.; Pure Pork Country Sausage, 5 lbs./$1; Pork Small Link Sausage, 35 cents/lb.

25 Years Ago, 1981

Maine – and Lewiston – may be more fortunate than other areas of the country in the area of nurses. While the country as a whole is experiencing a “critical” shortage of nurses, Maine is not.

Directors of the nursing services departments of both Central Maine Medical Center and St. Mary’s General Hospital – both in Lewiston – said recently that neither of those institutions are feeling the crunch themselves.

Margaret Ross, director of CMMC’s nursing services, said she thinks the fact that there are two nursing schools in Lewiston helps keep a supply of registered nurses in the region.