Day in history for July 4, 2001

1876 -- 125 years ago

Rock Island celebrated July 4 with a parade and decorations of flags and boughs over streets and stores. Steamboats and boxcars bringing thousands of people were greeted with cannon salutes.

1901 -- 100 years ago

An estimated $5,000 was spent for fireworks by Rock Island residents. There were no fires and only 13 persons injured, an unusually small list of accidents.

1926 -- 75 years ago

Ivan Fahay, 14, Rock Island, leaped into the Hennepin Canal at Lock 31 and rescued an unidentified woman.

1951 -- 50 years ago

While citizens throughout the land were hopeful that the guns in Korea would soon be silent, a series of roaring bangs and brilliant fireworks displays lighted the darkened skies before an enthusiastic crowd of 11,000 persons at the Rock Island Public Schools Stadium last night. The Fourth of July eve show entertained the largest crowd in the 11 years the Jaycees have sponsored the pyrotechnic displays.

1976 -- 25 years ago

A group of demonstrators, citing the Bicentennial as a time for spiritual evaluation, picketed Saturday outside a Rock Island adult theater and bookstore to protest immorality. Vandals expressed apparent dissatisfaction with the celebration in Moline earlier in the day by desecrating one flag and turning two others upside down. Upside down flags are used in imitation of an internationally recognized signal of distress.

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