From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Feb. 28, 1916:

• “A fraternity at the University is engaged in a line of research – a telephone line – that requires a member of the fraternity at one end and any sorority girl at the other. Last fall some of the fraternity brothers had cause to marvel at the remarkably long conversations some of their girl friends were capable of sustaining over the telephone. One member had a brilliant thought. ‘Let’s find which girl in the University can talk the longest time continuously over the telephone,’ he suggested, and the contest was on. Of course the girls are not supposed to know that there is such a contest in progress, as that might interfere with the validity of the data being gathered. The record at the present time for an uninterrupted flow of language is thirty-five minutes.”
• “The working chamber of the caisson of Pier No. 5 of the new bridge, in which the men have been digging sand and rock during the weeks just passed, was filled with concrete this afternoon. The excavation was completed this morning. The shale and soft stone which was found before the resting place of the pier was reached were removed with the aid of dynamite…. The bottom of the pier, now on solid rock, is practically forty-five feet below the surface of the water. The bridge workmen are now making preparations to being the other water piers.”
• “Joy riders stole the lineman’s car of the Baldwin telephone company out of the Burgess barn last Friday night about ten o’clock and proceeded to take a joy ride. The car was driven about three miles north of Baldwin on the Santa Fe trail where it was ditched. The car was damaged to the extent of about seventy-five dollars…. Measures are being pushed to apprehend the riders, and already several clues have been found. Severe measures will be dealt out to the culprits if they are caught.”
• “Nobody loves the thresherman. At least that is the belief of twenty members of the Douglas county brotherhood of threshers who met this afternoon at the Merchants association headquarters. There are laws to make the thresher owners plant the bridges on which their machines cross. Why not build bridges that will stand necessary traffic without so much trouble? is one of the questions which the threshermen want answered. And the next legislature will hear of this and other things, according to Elmer Allen, president of the organization. There are seventy-five threshing machine owners in Douglas county of which sixty belong to the brotherhood.”