Here are the top headlines from June 17 editions of The Telegraph over the years:
Hundreds of people, including law enforcement officers, turned out June 16, 2006, for the funeral of Calhoun County Chief Deputy Sheriff Brian Gibbons, who had died of injuries suffered in a June 10 traffic crash near Michael. Police officers came from as far away as St. Charles, Missouri, and DeKalb County in northern Illinois to pay their respects to the 33-year-old Gibbons at the Alexander and Gubser Funeral Home in Jerseyville. Even U.S. Secret Service agents attended as the line of vehicles in the funeral procession stretched for more than 3 miles.
The 18th Annual Riverbend Futbol Club's Father's Day Classic was in full swing at Gordon Moore Park in Alton, with 80 games played on June 16, 2001, including 51 for boys and 29 for girls. The teams ranged in age from under-9 to under-19, with finals set for Father's Day that Sunday.
A report from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency showed air in the Metro East area had improved over the preceding 10 years but remained the worst in the state in most pollution categories. Alton had the second-highest levels of airborne sulfur dioxide in Illinois in 1990, behind only East St. Louis, but the manager of IEPA's air systems monitoring said the levels in both cities were below federal and state standards. The IEPA said levels of particulates, such as dust, ash and heavy metals, would continue to be monitored.
A jury in Madison County Circuit Court convicted Larry D. Spears, 35, of armed robbery and attempted murder in connection with a daring armed robbery and shootout at the Illinois State Bank in East Alton in August 1973. Spears, who held a law degree, a master's degree and credit toward a Ph.D. in physics, had been confined in the psychiatric section of the federal prison system's hospital in Springfield, Missouri, for most of the time since the robbery. A federal court previously had found Spears mentally incompetent to stand trial after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but the Madison County jury rejected his insanity defense.
The Telegraph did not publish that day, a Sunday.
Five separate coroner's juries returned verdicts of “accidental†in the deaths of five men killed in an explosion and fire June 14, 1926, at Standard Oil Co.'s Wood River Refinery. The verdicts were returned after members of the juries heard testimony showing that the oil flash resulted from unusual atmospheric conditions prevailing at the time, coupled with a wind from the northwest that carried gasoline vapors escaping from a mixing still. The victims were identified as Bert E. Huff, Joseph Luppens, Frank M. Girard and William H. Koehne, all of Wood River, and Harry Kingery of Curdie Heights in Alton.
