100 years ago: “Speculation ranging from a band of well-armed and expert yeggs to a bandy-legged clerk who wanted money to buy his girl a new fall dress with fur around the bottom is indulged in regarding the blowing of the safe in the North Side grocery at an early hour. According to the best evidence given by the neighbors who claim they heard two or three explosions, the safe was ripped apart by a charge of nitroglycerine or some high explosive. The robbers obtained $450 in currency, gold and silver.”
50 years ago: “Harold Lloyd, immortal comedian of the silent screen, made a nostalgic pilgrimage to Durango, his former home. Lloyd, who says he’s turning 40 but taking his time about it, lived at 752 Third Ave. as a boy. ‘I put on my first pair of long pants in Durango,’ Lloyd told a Herald reporter. ‘Many important things happened to me here.’ ‘Who’s Who’ shows Lloyd to be 71 years old, but he’s a well-preserved 71, Although no longer the slim bespectacled youth of the silent films, Lloyd’s smile remains the same, and his general appearance is youthful. He and a group of Hollywood men were on their way to Denver for a photographic convention.”
25 years ago: “A top Italian competitor in the World Mountain Bike Championships was hospitalized with major facial fractures following a head-on mountain bike collision on U.S. Highway 550 south of Purgatory. Also injured in the wreck was a Japanese competitor hospitalized with a closed-head injury and facial lacerations. The injuries were in addition to 54 on-course injuries treated by medics at Purgatory Ski Resort.”
Most items in this column are taken from Herald archives, Center of Southwest Studies and Animas Museum. Their accuracy may not be verified.
