IN 1977 – Federal spending was due to top $500 billion for the first time in history as a result of the budget for fiscal year 1979, White House sources said. The budget deficit for the period was projected to be about $58 billion, about what it was in 1977. In his 1976 campaign for president, Jimmy Carter had promised to balance the budget by 1981, but few believed that possible barring a drastic slash in federal spending and a sharp increase in taxes to increase the government income.

Local investigators were completing their compilation of data from the Pier I building explosion and fire that had resulted in the deaths of two 30-year-old apartment-dwellers at the Eighth and Massachusetts site and caused damage in excess of $250,000.

IN 1962 – Kansas University’s planned expansion of Memorial Stadium was still in the “negotiation stage” after bids had exceeded the engineer’s estimate of $600,000 by well over $100,000. Athletic director Dutch Lonborg said efforts were being made to pare down the project to conform to available funding and that the goal still was to have the work completed in time for the 1963 season opening the coming September.

IN 1902 – From the Lawrence Daily World of Dec. 19, 1902: “Frank Strong, chancellor of the University of Kansas, yesterday submitted his first biennial report to the governor. The new chancellor urges the necessity of much larger appropriations from the next legislature if the university is to be put into a condition to do the work expected of such an institution. ‘It seems right and our duty,” says chancellor Strong, “to do the full work that is right and proper for the state university to do, and that means we must have large funds to work with. A better education than we can provide cannot be found, and there is no reason why so large a number of Kansas young men and women should be going elsewhere to school.'”