Here are the top headlines from May 26 editions of The Telegraph over the years:
Madison County Sheriff Bob Hertz warned that adults who played host to underage drinking parties in connection with local high school graduations would be prosecuted under the Sheriff's Department's “zero tolerance†policy on underage drinkers. Eight of The Telegraph area high schools were set to graduate hundreds of students that night.
Reader's Digest magazine profiled World War II Medal of Honor recipient Russell Dunham of Jersey County in its June issue, along with two other winners of the nation's highest military honor in Vietnam and Korea. The article by Ralph Kinney Bennett recounted how Dunham was wounded by German machine gun fire near Kaysersberg, France, on Jan. 8, 1945, but still managed to wipe out three enemy machine gun nests.
The Memorial Day weekend opened with a splash in The Telegraph area, as warm weather lured people to swimming pools. The National Weather Service reported a high temperature of 84 degrees in the area on May 25, 1991.
The popular Public Broadcasting Service science program, “Nova,†announced its camera crews would be in Alton for the next two years to film the construction of the new Clark Bridge across the Mississippi River. Work on the span began in 1990, but the program's producers said the episode would not air until after the bridge's scheduled completion in 1993.
Alton police said their investigation into the slayings of Arthur Herbstreit and his wife, Winifred, in the couple's Hazel Street home on April 9, 1976, had led to the arrests of some 20 people on a total of 86 felony counts. The cases included 40 home burglaries, five auto burglaries, and three motorcycle thefts. However, no charges had been filed in the killings of the Herbstreits.
Officials with the Joe Pohl excavating firm said they were planning an early resumption of work on the federal flood protection levee shielding Alton from the Mississippi River, thanks to falling river levels. The Mississippi River had dropped to 6 feet below the flood stage of 21 feet, allowing the borrow pits where excavators were obtaining soil to dry out.
Alton's Board of Local Improvements called a public hearing on the proposed paving of Seventh Street from Piasa east to Alton, including a pavement about the public square and a connection north on Easton to Eighth Street. Plans called for a 40-foot-wide brick street, the same width as the present pavement on East Seventh Street. Brick was specified because of the steep hill leading from Piasa to Alby.Â
