100 years ago, 1916
“In your paper recently you spoke of the firing of guns in the first of the evening Thursday and Friday nights,” writes a correspondent to the Lewiston Journal. “It was no gun. It was some repeating bomb shells that Lew Morrell of Webster street was testing. These were sent by the National Fireworks Company, by which he is employed, and he was simply giving them a try. They are something new this season and this particular kind of shell makes a very loud report.” This explanation will be a relief to timid people in the locality of the shooting for all sorts of things has been imagined as to the origin of the shots.

50 years ago, 1966
Lord Thomson, London newspaper owner, outbid Richard W. Sampson, 49, of Auburn, for the sculpture of Winston Churchill done by Sir Jacob Epstein. The bronze head will be given by Lord Thomson to Churchill College, Cambridge. Lord Thomson paid $14,112 for the sculpture. The bronze sculpture is one foot high on a black marble base. It was announced that the $14,112 price is a record for such a sculpture, the previous record being $10,640. Sampson paid $27,930 for one of Churchill’s paintings last November.

25 years ago, 1991
“New York was so fun. I would go through all the fund-raising again to go to the Big Apple again any day,” said Brooke Grygiel, an eighth-grade student at the Minot Consolidated School. She was one of 22 students from the school who recently spent three days in New York City accompanied by eight chaperones. The students conducted a yearlong fund-raising campaign, holding public suppers, school dances and a country Sunday, that more than matched their parent’s contribution for the $7,500 project. ‘”I was awed by the glass high-rise buildings” said Jon Staples. And of the Empire State Building Mark Selly said, “You would be lucky if you could see the top.” “I was overwhelmed by the amount of people, from all different races and nationalities,” said Tom Palmer.

The material in Looking Back is reproduced exactly as it originally appeared, although misspellings and errors made at that time may be edited.