100 years ago: 1919

The first entertainment given under the auspices of the newly elected of the Ladies’ Aid of the West Auburn Congregational Church was held Friday evening. The president of the society is Mrs. J. F. Flanders. On the program were several humorous recitations by Miss Frances and Miss Margaret White and piano solos by Miss Brown of Auburn.

50 years ago: 1969

The men who opened the Moon Age returned to their home planet today, blazing back through the earth’s atmosphere to a landing in the Pacific about nine miles from this recovery ship where President Nixon waited to greet the space heroes. The Apollo 11 ship, carrying Neil A. Armstrong. Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. and Michael Collins, hit the water at 12:40 p.m. EDT, climaxing an adventure in which two men walked the surface of the moon for the first tune. On landing, Apollo 11 turned upside down in three-to-six-foot waves and the astronauts inflated flotation bags to right it. The same thing happened to Apollo 7 when it landed last October. “We’re still in stable 2 upside down,” Armstrong reported, “but slowly righting ourselves,” Eleven minutes later, with aircraft and helicopters overhead, Armstrong reported ship bobbing right side up. “Stable 1,” he called out. The landing was not visible from the carrier because of a combination of a hazy sky and the fact that it was just after dawn in the Pacific.

25 years ago: 1994

Remember those Lego building blocks you played with as a child, and the joy you felt in creating something where nothing existed before. One local Rumford boy has taken that creativity one step further and a recycling center he built was featured in the Lego Builders Club magazine. Christopher DeSalle, 10, of Somerset Street, has been building with Legos for nearly his whole life. “He has been building with Legos since about a year old when he stopped trying to eat them,” joked his mother, Jean, who, along with her husband, Peter, have been encouraging Chris. Chris was featured in the summer 1994 edition of Brick Kicks, the Lego Builders Club magazine, for a recycling center be built after touring a recycling plant. “We went on a field trip in third grade to a recycling center in Lewiston said Chris. He added that he and the other members of his class at St. Athena and St John’s School got to build a bale of paper at the center. After visiting the center, Chris got the idea to build a model recycling center out of Legos.

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

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