From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for May 24, 1974:

• In their attempt to make a final landfill site recommendation to the Douglas County Commission, members of the county’s Solid Waste Advisory Board abandoned its two prime sites near the Wakarusa Valley School. Faced with 39 residents from the neighborhood near the school, the committee decided to switch their recommendation to a site just south of K-10 east of Lawrence. Landowners from the Wakarusa Valley School area had presented a petition stating several objections to the sites originally proposed, saying there would be “harmful environmental impacts to the school,” increased truck traffic, an unpredictable water table, and destruction of the scenic views of Clinton Lake.
• Legendary bandleader and composer Duke Ellington, 75, died early today at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital after having undergone treatment for pneumonia. Born Edward Kennedy Ellington, he had written more than 1,000 compositions, including not only his famous jazz standards but “in later years … a prodigious stream of longer orchestral pieces, tone poems, sacred works, choral pieces, movie television and ballet scores and even an opera or two,” according to a press release. Ellington, who had been awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, was also the first jazz musician to receive the French Legion of Honor. “I never count awards,” he had said at the time. “I only enjoy. I don’t even count the bars when I write, do I? Oh, I guess I have to.”