A daily look at some of The News & Observer headlines on this date in past years. On this day in 2004, a Wake County grand jury indicted 34-year-old research scientist Ann Miller Kontz for murder in the arsenic poisoning death of her first husband — a case that gripped the Triangle for four years.
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Kontz would later plead guilty to second-degree murder in the 2000 death of husband Eric Miller after nearly five years of denials and a remarriage to a Christian rock guitarist. In court, she admitted to a conspiracy with a co-worker with whom she had an affair and who killed himself soon after.
Miller, a pediatric AIDS researcher, died after several doses of arsenic, including one given while he was recuperating in the hospital.
Kontz remains in prison.
A 3-year-old boy fell down a 30-foot well and clung to a pipe near the bottom, suspended over deep water until rescuers could pull him out. The well had been covered by a sheet of metal before the boy fell, and his grandmother yelled down to him at the bottom while he called back, “I’m tired” and “I want to sit down.” A rescue squad lowered one from their team on a rope and pulled out the boy, who suffered only a knot on his head.
Wake Forest College voted to allow dancing on campus, joining Meredith College’s decision a week earlier in Raleigh as Baptist schools widened the definition of acceptable social behavior. The N&O predicted “an all-out verbal fight” at the upcoming state Baptist Convention. Meanwhile, Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day” hit the top of the charts.
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In 1926, a farmer in Blue Ridge Mountains town of Hot Springs discovered that one of his chickens had been born with two sets of wings.
The four-winged chicken developed extra, smaller wings under the larger pair, each of them ending in a spur. “The freak,” as The N&O described the chick, “is attracting a lot of attention.”
“The chicken seems to be surviving these handicaps well,” it continued, “and is not asking for help.”
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