Missouri History Today

The FCC approved the start-up of a new TV station by the Educational Television Commission.  It would, of course, be KETC.   

St. Louis residents were finding eels in their sinks. The water commissioner said that eels and minnows could easily pass through the filters when they were young and then would grow while they lived in the settling basins. 

Alan Shepard became the first American to go into space. His Mercury capsule is one of twenty spaceships to be built in St. Louis by McDonnell-Douglas.  

On this day nineteen-year-old Henry Shaw arrived in Missouri. He stepped off the steamboat Maid of Orleans, made a fortune, then retired to look for ways to use his money helping people.

On this day the railroad was welcomed into Springfield, Missouri. This effectively removed the Ozarks as a barrier to Springfield's connection with the east.

The Neosho Times reported that some Washburn, MO boys were working for a farmer when they plowed up about $80 worth of gold and silver which the farmer had buried there at the beginning of the Civil War.

The treaty that authorized the Louisiana Purchase was signed on this date in Paris.

Missouri was requested to provide five regiments of infantry and one battery of light artillery for the Spanish-American War. 

Monett expected to be "flying high" according to the Monett Times. They were pinning their hopes on the new airplane industry and the Monett Aeroplane Company.

The Nation's worst maritime disaster happened on the Mississippi a fair piece south of Cape Girardeau.