100 years ago: 1919

The world champion Boston Red Sox opened the baseball season here today against the New York Americans. Officers of the members of the army and navy attended. There was a parade by a large delegation of sailors from the fleet in the New York Harbor.

50 years ago: 1969

Residents of Lewiston Auburn get a brief look at the federally funded Goff Hill Project to be shown on today’s 6 pm report on WGAN. A brief sequence features program director, Richard Cahill and Richard Plante, communication relations specialist.

25 years ago: 1994

Dr. George Glass of Pediatric Associates told those in attendance at Wednesday’s Kiwanis meeting that some areas of the country have only a 30 percent immunization rate because people think they’re safe from the diseases that used to kill large numbers of people. But be cautioned that the organisms that cause these terrible illnesses are not gone but merely lying dormant “These things are out there just waiting for us to let down our guard,” he said. Glass was speaking on the importance of having children immunized as a kickoff to National Immunization Week. Despite the fact that there are now several vaccines available to protect children from killer diseases, 29 percent of the children in Maine are not adequately protected by the age of two. Glass explained that vaccines fool the body into thinking that it has been attacked by a particular organism so the immune system produces substances to protect it from that organism. Then if exposure to the disease really occurs the body already has a defense system in place to defeat the invader. But he also said that since the body may go for a long time without encountering the disease it begins to forget that it needs to guard against it. That’s why booster immunizations are necessary.

The material used in Looking Back is reproduced exactly as it originally appeared, although misspellings and errors may be corrected.