From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Jan. 27, 1915:

• “Harvey Proper had a very interesting experience last night when he took a sackful of bananas home with him and found that he had carried a large tarantula with them. After he was at home and comfortably located in his arm chair he put his hand in the banana sack and was going to put the fruit in a fruit dish but he dropped the bananas with much more haste than he picked them up for he felt something that did not seem to him was a banana. Upon investigation he found that it was a large tarantula. He immediately began to figure how he was going to capture the ‘Beast,’ but all of his cunning was of no avail until the happy thought of letting it go to sleep struck him. He did not bother it longer and it crawled back on the bananas and was just making itself comfortable when Proper again made his attack with a pair of impromptu pincers. His attack was successful and he carefully placed the spider in a bottle in which he exhibited it at The Journal-World office.”
• “Two men giving their names as Sidney Cattle and Henry Grigg came to Lawrence yesterday afternoon and immediately began plying their trade at selling watches. The police picked the men up on a charge of peddling without a license. They are being held in the city jail awaiting trial. The men were in the watch business for they had just received a shipment of thirty of the watches at Topeka and were prepared to make a number of sales. Their watches were of the cheapest make according to the statement of Ed. Parsons who examined the watches…. The grafters’ game was to go from place to place and put up the stall that they were railroad men from Toronto, Canada and were down and out and needed a little money. They would produce their railroad card to show that they were railroad men, then they would show the watch which was supposed to be a 21 jewel Hamilton. The case was guaranteed to wear 25 years but Mr. Parsons said it would wear possibly five months.”
• “With a slight rise in temperature this morning the promised snow began to fall accompanied by a sharp north wind. The temperature remained about the same all day and the snow continued to fall, but not in sufficient quantities to insure sleighing and coasting. The north wind has accompanied the snow all day and shows little signs of changing. The weather man promises that colder weather may be expected with continued cloudiness. No promise of the time for the cold wave to break is given.”
• “A fire was narrowly averted in the business offices of the Daily Kansan about 6 o’clock last night. Everyone had left the offices but Doyle Buckles, a University freshman, who is employed in the printing department. As Buckles passed through the business office, after finishing his day’s work, he noticed flames shooting up around one of the desks in the office. He rushed to the desk where he found that the papers underneath were ablaze, but as the fire had not gained much headway he easily extinguished it. It is believed that someone carelessly dropped a lighted match under the desk which caused the papers to ignite.”
• “Fire in the stone house just west of the Wind Mill Hill on West Ninth this afternoon destroyed all of the household goods of Mr. Fowler and his family, consisting of himself, wife, four children and a married daughter and her husband. The men have been out of work for three weeks and it leaves them in bad shape. T. J. Lamb took the family in for the present and if anyone can give work to either or both of the men they will be doing a worthy act.”