100 years ago
July 5, 1922
• The annual picnic for the children of St. Joseph's Orphanage, attended by thousands, was one of the most successful affairs since the founding of the institution, according to Bishop Morris and other church officials. Colorful refreshments and other booths were scattered among the groves of the orphanage campus, and a "midway" carried most of the features of a thriving country fair.
50 years ago
July 5, 1972
• Most Rev. Albert L. Fletcher, Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Little Rock since 1947, is retiring. The Vatican announced Tuesday that Pope Paul VI had accepted the resignation Bishop Fletcher submitted soon after his 75th birthday last October. The new bishop will be Rt. Rev. Msgr. Andrew J. McDonald, 48, vicar general of the Diocese of Savannah, Ga., who calls himself "just an ordinary fellow."
25 years ago
July 5, 1997
• Connie Robbins of Clarksville has served as a Southern Baptist missionary in the Russian city of Khabarovsk for three years. She works with local Baptists planting churches, developing programs for women, even visiting prisons. After two years in Khabarovsk, a city of 750,000 nearly 4,000 miles east of Moscow on the Chinese border, Robbins came home to Arkansas in 1996. She just couldn't stay. "I really liked the people ... and felt like there was freedom to do work," Robbins said by telephone this week from Khabarovsk. "I felt like this was home and wanted to come back." Now the Russian government may send Robbins and other foreign missionaries packing. A harsh new law on religious associations in Russia would deny legal status to faiths not registered for at least 15 years -- or since 1982, when Leonid Brezhnev still ruled the Soviet Union and religious persecution was common. Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, on June 23 passed the bill 330-8. The Federation Council, or upper house, approved it Friday 112-4. It now requires only the signature of President Boris Yeltsin to become law.
10 years ago
July 5, 2012
• Wildfires blazed across the state Wednesday as fire crews and National Guard soldiers prepared for even more to ignite because of people celebrating the holiday with fireworks. "It's bad," Sheila Doughty, information officer for the Arkansas Forestry Commission, said of the fire dangers. In June, the state reported four times more wildfires than the year before. That trend continued Wednesday, as fireworks and dry conditions contributed to blazes in 15 of the state's 75 counties across seven of the Arkansas Forestry Commission's eight districts. Most of the state is under a burn ban.