New Orleans – Announcement was made tonight that nine negro inmates of the parish jail will be used by the state board of health in a five-week test to learn whether sugar molasses, as it has been made in Louisiana for many years, is injurious to human health. Sulpheuric acid is used in the Louisiana process, and the use of the chemical was recently stopped under an interpretation of the pure food law. The experiment consists in feeding the negroes plenty of molasses and making blood tests.

50 years ago, 1957

MADRID – A salesman who was driving by emerged as the hero of a fire that leveled two homes and two barns, and burned more than 25 acres Tuesday. Carl Pratt, identified by townspeople as a salesman for the Holmes-Swift Co. in Augusta, was burned about the face when he raced into the burning home of Mr. and Mrs. Ormand Decker and carried the three small Decker children to safety. Pratt said he saw the terrible faces of the children in a window of the blazing home as he drove past.

• Yesterday a 60-year weather record was broken as a sizzling sun boosted the mercury up over the 70-mark to 76 degrees at 3 p.m. This was the high for the day and the all-time high for April 23, breaking the prior mark of 72 set in 1897.

• Passenger train service on the Lewiston-to-Farmington branch of the Maine Central Railroad will end Saturday, according to the spring and summer railroad schedule which will become effective Sunday.

25 years ago, 1982

• Maine, New Hampshire and most of the other states of the union will go on Daylight Savings Time, or Fast Time, tomorrow morning at 2 o’clock. The semi-annual time change is to take better advantage of the longer hours of daylight.

• An estimated half-million young American men, born between Jan. 1 and Oct. 1, 1963, have failed to register with the Selective Service System, as required by law, according to the federal General Accounting Office. Its survey showed that an increasing number of 18-year-olds are not registering.