Past Pages

130 Years Ago

Carson Mediums: In Carson the mania for spiritualistic phenomenon has broken out and not a night passes that a circle of people are not gathered in one or more houses trying to get manifestations. The Appeal knows of numbers of people who are able to get raps by sitting quietly for a half an hour at a table. The editor was sent to attend a séance in which a little girl, 12 years old was the medium. The slate test was in order and she wrote the first name of a man who died in California ... When asked as to the manner of death, she wrote “shot through the heart,” which was quite true. Then she laid her hands upon the table and the rapping was distinct. There is a young boy who claims to be a medium and asserts that he can materialize a figure in broad daylight. There are five mediums in Carson who give seances to their friends ... and the excitement in the matters grows apace.

120 Years Ago

Hoodlums: The hoodlums congregate about saloons ... down empty beer kegs and at night fill the air with filth and blasphemy so that ladies walking down Carson street expect at any moment to have their ears saluted with obscene language ... They ought to be run in under the Vagrancy Act ... Some have drifted in here from Virginia City and Reno.

70 Years Ago

Point rationing of meat, butter, cooking fats and cheese began bringing 50 percent of all foodstuffs under control. Carson was no exception to the unusual demand ... Never in the city’s history had there been so great a run of meat markets ...

50 Years Ago

Photo caption: Essay winner James Kurtz is shown receiving a check from VFW and Barbara Calhoun for his winning essay “What Can I Do for My Country?”...

30 Years Ago

The largest announced underground nuclear test of 1983 scheduled for the Nevada Test Site is put on hold for 24 hours. The Cobra buried 1,780 feet below a volcanic plateau at the DOE facility has an explosive force of between 20 and 150 kilotons ...

Sue Ballew is the daughter of Bill Dolan, who wrote this column for the Nevada Appeal from 1947 until his death in 2006.