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A daily look at some of The News & Observer headlines on this date in past years.
On this day in 2009, the creator of Raleigh’s “Barrel Monster” had his day in court after his roadside creation brought him widespread Internet fame but also landed him in legal trouble.
NC State student Joseph Carnevale assembled the fanged orange creature out of pieces of construction barrels found along Hillsborough Street, photos of which spread to laptops everywhere.
All charges vanished when Carnevale agreed to perform community service, and the barrel parts’ owner Hamlett Associates showed no hard feelings about being an unintentional art patron - even saying he wanted to erect the monster outside his Guilford County office.
“It’s been fantastic advertising,” the “victim” said.
1981: A gunpoint escape
A suspect in multiple slayings escaped from Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh while undergoing psychiatric evaluations, holding several guards at gunpoint with a pistol his wife apparently provided during a visit.
The FBI tracked him to Washington state and then Georgia, where agents finally captured him after nine months.
1952:
The mercury rose to 104 degrees in Raleigh, a record that still stands for July 22 - though modern record-keeping says the heat hit 105 that day in 1952.
The N&O reported no cases of “heat prostration.”
It rained briefly in only spot across all of North Carolina: Cherry Point.
And 100 years ago today ...
In 1926, a very hungry thief broke into the smokehouse owned by Mr. and Mrs. Hughey Mobley of Dunn while the elderly couple attended revival services.
The pork-loving burglar made off with “eight or nine” hams, shoulders and sides while the Mobleys reveled in the spirit.
The N&O noted that “efforts to apprehend the guilty proved futile,” and its headline writer gave the criminal a fitting nickname: “Meanest Man.”
