90 YEARS AGO…
August, 1931
August 24, 1931: Shirley Against Gas Tax Boost
State Highway Commissioner Henry G. Shirley today expressed the hope that the 1932 General Assembly would leave the Highway Department revenues as they are now.
His expression today was in opposition to the plan to take from the highway Department the annual direct appropriations amounting this year to $1,535,370, the equivalent of the old property tax levied for the support of the department.
Mr. Shirley further asserted that he is opposed to an increase in the gasoline tax and indicated he is opposed to the proposal of J. Hopkins Hall, restricting labor on State highways to persons who have been residents in Virginia for at least a year.
75 YEARS AGO…
August, 1946
August 24, 1946: Republicans Discuss Fall Campaign Plans
Campaign strategy of Republican senatorial and congressional candidates in the fall campaigns was being discussed here today by the Republican State Campaign Policy Committee.
The principal task of the committee is to map campaign strategy aimed at defeating Senator Harry F. Byrd and else the Democrats nominate to the “United States Senate, and to coordinate tactics to be used by the senatorial and congressional candidates in the various parts of the state. The Republicans have two senatorial candidates and nine congressional aspirants.
50 YEARS AGO…
August, 1971
August 24, 1971: Congressman Urges Food Inspection Probe
Rep. Benjamin S. Rosenthal has urged a congressional investigation of federal food-inspection programs because of the discovery twice in two months of soup contaminated with botulism toxin.
The New York Democrat, who is chairman of a consumer investigative subcommittee until reorganization killed the panel this year, accused the agencies Monday of “an incredible abuse of their responsibility to protect the consumer from unsafe products.”
25 YEARS AGO…
August, 1996
August 24, 1996: Valid Lottery Tickets Thrown Out In Trash
Convenience store employees broke no laws when they threw out 950 redeemed winning instant lottery tickets, even though the tickets all could have been redeemed again.
“There was nothing criminally involved,” said Paula Otto, Lottery Department spokeswoman. She declined Friday to name the store.
A citizen, who authorities have declined to identify, notified the Isle of Wight’s Sheriff’s Department early Tuesday morning of finding a bag of lottery tickets in a trash bin near a Windsor convenience store.
The tickets, worth more than $1,000, had been tossed into the trash by a store employee without first voiding them in some way to prevent them from being redeemed again, Ms. Otto said.
“We advise retailers that they should tear the ticket, punch a hole in it, mark an X or something to invalidate it,” she said.
After the first of the year, all tickets will have a bar code on them so that each ticket can be instantly verified and immediately recorded, Ms. Otto said.
10 YEARS AGO…
August, 2011
August 24, 2011: Quake One Of Biggest Since 1897
The magnitude 5.8 earthquake that struck Virginia on Tuesday was the largest on the East Coast since one of the same strength in New York in 1944, sccording to the U.S. Geological Survey.
It was the largest in Virginia since a 5.9 temblor in 1897. The largest East Coast quake on record was a 7.3 in South Carolina in 1886.
A 5.8 earthquake releases as much energy as nearly 8 kilotons of TNT.
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