From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Jan. 5, 1915:

• “After six weeks of hard, steady practice, the University of Kansas goal tossers will open their 1915 basket ball season against the Ames ‘Aggies’ at Ames, Iowa, Friday and Saturday nights. Coach Hamilton has had charge of the Jayhawker squad since two weeks before Christmas holidays and declares that his team is ready for the opening. With four ‘K’ men in addition to the new material which has become a part of the Jayhawker squad this year, prospects are that the Jayhawker five will have another successful season and will bid fair for the Missouri Valley Conference honors…. Local fans will not have an opportunity to see the Crimson and the Blue five in action against a foreign team before January 15 and 16. Coach Hamilton has not arranged games for these two dates yet, but will probably schedule William Jewell or ‘Phog’ Allen’s Warrensburg Normals, to get the Jayhawkers ready for the hard contests with the Cornhuskers the following week at Lawrence. This is the first season that Kansas has met Nebraska in a regularly scheduled basket ball game in several years.”
• “Yesterday afternoon, W. S. Price of this city received government patents on a smoke consuming stove that he has invented. Mr. Price has been working on the idea for several years and the plans of the stove have been before the patent board but a short time. The stove is a very unique affair; it is built on the plan of the kerosene lamp. Mr. Price got the idea from the fact that a lamp will smoke without a chimney and with one it consumes the smoke when rightly regulated. The patents will be in the hands of a promoter in the near future and it is possible that the factory for manufacturing these stoves will be put up here.”
• “The storm period which held the middle west in its grip during the last of December has been completely broken and the temperature has risen for the last few days. The snow which covered the ground is almost all gone. All that was left this morning was badly damaged by the rain which began to fall at about 9 o’clock and continued for the remainder of the morning. The weather man gives very little hope that the cold will return within the next few days.”
• “Work on cleaning the mud that has collected on the pavement of Massachusetts street began this morning. The pavement has been fairly covered with mud the past few days making traffic very disagreeable. Part of the snow in the gutters has not yet thawed and it was not cleaned off. Only the mud in the center of the street was cleaned up. Many of the merchants have suggested that the street be flushed, but no steps in that direction have been taken as yet.”
• “J. S. Amick was in no amiable frame of mind this morning. He was looking for an invention that will permit a person to commit assault with attempt to do considerable damage over the telephone. His slumbers were disturbed, he alleges, by someone calling him up and asking his street number at 4 o’clock this morning.”
• “Rules and regulations, governing standards of quality, pressure, accuracy of measurement and service of natural gas utilities in the state, will become effective January 26, 1915, according to an order issued by the Kansas Public Utilities commission…. The rules provide the cubic foot shall be the standard for measuring quantity, the British thermal the standard for determining the quality of the gas offered for sale. Except by permission of the commission, no utility shall sell to the consumer in Kansas, natural gas having a heating power of less than 800 thermal units and the heating value in gas shall be determined semi-weekly.”