July 16
100 Years ago – 1924
Ad: “Say it with Flowers: Howard-Hickory Nursery Company. Fruit trees, Shrubbery, etc., Landscape gardening a specialty. We do the planting for 10 per cent this also covers guarantee that plants will live for a period of one year. C.V. Davis, Representative, Martinsville.”
75 years ago – 1949
A still was destroyed in the Drunken Springs community [Do you know where that is? If so, please tell us]. Agents Roy C. Larsen and G.P. Smethie had found the still earlier in the week with mash in it. They returned the day that they figured it out would be running, but they found it to be much the same – except that the worm and still cap were gone. Those were the two most expensive pieces of equipment, costing about $150 together. They destroyed the 300-gallon capacity still, with its 1,500 gallons of mash, along with two and a half cases of half-gallon fruit jars, four large tubs and two buckets.
1960
Tiny Norman of Axton was keeping up two peacocks that had been found wandering. People checked with Mrs. G.T. Lester Jr at King’s Mountain to see if they were any of her four peacocks, but her four were still all at home. A few days later it was discovered that the peacocks belonged to the J.E. Covingtons of Beaver Creek, and they were returned home.
50 years ago – 1974
Glazed Products Inc. was fined $700 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for the explosion June 6 which killed Linda Wagoner Hubbard, 28, and injured five others, including Theodore Petross and Terry Wayne Miller, who were treated for burns at the Medical College of Virginia.
The Martinsville Drive-In in Rich Acres, which had been the subject of complaints by showing X-rated movies, opened for this night with only R-rated movies, “Student Nurse” and “Candy-Stripe Nurse.” Both of those also were being showed at the Castle Drive-In in Collinsville. Both theaters were owned by R and C Theaters. Three nights before, county officials had seized the X-rated movie “Orgy of Revenge” as a movie toward taking action against the drive-in for showing obscene movies.
25 years ago - 1999
Virginia State Police high command came to the area to warn local law enforcement officers that they should not be doing any political campaigning. That came about after a trooper gave candidate Barry Stowe and his wife a ride to the Martinsville Speedway the previous week.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin accessed on microfilm at the Martinsville Branch Library.