A daily look at some of The News & Observer headlines on this date in past years.
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On this day in 2013, a Wake County judge ordered the state government to pay $74,446 to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, compensation for its long and unsuccessful legal fight over the Possum Drop — a controversial New Year’s Eve celebration.
PETA sued the Wildlife Resources Commission for issuing a permit for the event in far-western Clay County, which involved lowering a live opossum in a cage to ring in the new year.
Debate over possum cruelty would continue for five more years, but the event would never draw the same crowds as its pre-PETA heyday.
Possums statewide made no audible comment.
Wake County health officials closed Sandling Beach at Falls Lake after swimmers there showed symptoms of shigellosis, a form of dysentery. Total confirmed cases hit 25, though many other swimmers got sick without a confirmed diagnosis. At one point, Wake opened and re-closed the beach on the same day, just six hours apart.
A judge in Columbus County sent 17 members of the Ku Klux Klan to prison on assault and conspiracy charges after a string of floggings nearby. An imperial wizard got four years behind bars, though the judge noted the state had been generous by offering plea bargains to misdemeanor charges.
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“I think they are victims of a social disease,” Solicitor Clifton L. Moore said. “The state is not thirsting for any severe punishment. We’re not out for blood.”
In 1926, a Wake County farmer named W.O. King walked into a doctor’s office with a bullet lodged in his brain, explaining that he had been mysteriously shot the day before.
King had been sleeping at around 2 a.m., sharing a bed with his brother, when a shot rang out in the bedroom. Neither heard nor saw anybody, and neither could name any enemies as likely suspects.
It did, however, take several hours before King sought medical aid for the bullet lodged under the skull behind his left ear. Dr. Louis M. West rushed King to Rex Hospital, where he removed both the projectile and a portion of the wounded farmer’s brain.
He remained “unmoved” as he emerged from the ether, The N&O reported, saying only, “Doctor, I’ve got a terrible headache.”
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