Jan. 5, 1949: Fifteen people attending a meeting at the Salvation Army hall on Cotton Street were overcome by gas fumes and taken to the hospital. Two were kept overnight. The fumes were thought to have been caused when a fan extinguished the flames in a gas heater.
Jan. 5, 1959: Rare 12-degree temperatures caught many homeowners and motorists unprepared and placed extra burdens on heating equipment that caused several fire alarms and some damage. Plumbing shops were swamped with calls from residents whose unprotected water pipes had frozen.
Jan. 5, 1961: About 45 Longview police and firefighters were treated to a steak dinner by Johnny Cace at his restaurant. It was the second such dinner in as many weeks; earlier Cace had fed another 45 off duty city employees as his guests. “You bring credit to the city,” he told them.
Jan. 5, 1962: A total of 258.75 miles of Longview streets were improved during 1961, the city traffic engineer reported. That was up about six miles from the previous year. The report included the fact Longview had 121.08 miles of paved streets and 137.67 miles of oiled streets.
Jan. 5, 1970: Purchase of a 19.5-acre site for a new regional operations center for Southwestern Electric Power Co., on Karnes Road between U.S. 259 and U.S. 80, was finalized. At an estimated cost of $1 million, the new center was to replace the existing facility at Cotton and Mobberly streets downtown.