From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Aug. 24, 1988:

• Lawrence residents were wondering about the cause of a loud booming noise that had occurred at about 10:45 this morning. As of this evening, police officials reported that they had not yet been able to determine the source of the sound, which had been heard throughout the city. Officials were not aware of any explosions in the area, and air traffic controllers from the Kansas Regional Air Traffic Control Center and the Air National Guard posts in Kansas and Nebraska reported that there had been no supersonic planes in the area, ruling out the possibility of a sonic boom. Police were continuing to investigate, saying that they planned to contact local weather stations after an Air Force official said that the boom may have been caused by a meteorological phenomenon.
• The shortage of parking spaces downtown was a big concern for the Lawrence City Commission. “We have a significant lack of parking downtown. I’ll do anything to alleviate that problem,” Mayor Bob Schumm said at the Commission meeting this week. City staff was looking into the cost of four sets of improvements suggested by the Downtown Improvement Committee, including adjusting parking meters on Massachusetts Street from a one-hour time limit to 90 minutes, doing away with penny meters, increasing the maximum time on more distant meters from five hours to 10, and creating angled parking on the east side of the 600 block of Vermont Street.