A daily look at some of The News & Observer headlines on this date in past years.
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In 2006, a North Carolina native missing overseas was found alive, saying she was kidnapped.
U.S. Air Force Officer Jill Metzger, a native of Henderson, North Carolina, was missing for about three days after, she said, she was abducted while shopping for souvenirs in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
Accounts of her reappearance differed, The News & Observer reported on Sept. 9, 2006. In one account, she knocked on the door of a house in Kant, about 22 miles away from where she was allegedly abducted. She looked “exhausted” and her hair was dyed.
In another, which Metzger’s father-in-law Kelly Mayo told The Associated Press, the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations said she was found on the side of the road with a shaved head. It was not clear why the accounts differed, The N&O reported on this day.
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Bruce Beck, then an associate pastor with the Central Baptist Church where Metzger’s family worshiped, said he spoke with a church member who was at the family home when the call came in that Metzger was found: “We’re of course ecstatic and rejoicing over the Lord and the way he has called up to pray,” he said.
Kelly Mayo said Metzger’s husband, Air Force Capt. Joshua Mayo, was “just beside himself” with “unbelievable joy” when he heard the news.
In 1926, several Eastern Carolina bright belt tobacco markets held their opening sales with prices ranging from 25 to 28 cents per pound. Large crowds of farmers and businessmen “unanimously expressed satisfaction with the trend of the market,” The N&O reported.
The next day, about half a million pounds of tobacco were sold in Wilson for prices even better than the market’s opening day. Official reports showed $166,601.04 was paid for 684,452 pounds of “the golden weed” — averaging $24.43 per hundred pounds.
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