25 Years Ago (Week of Feb. 23-March 1, 1969):

* Vandals apparently caused a fire that resulted in minor damage to Glenelg Country School. Fires were set in three different places in the two-story frame building. A firefighter and a police officer were injured while fighting the blaze, and required treatment in the emergency room of St. Agnes Hospital.

* About 70,000 acres in the Little Patuxent and Middle Patuxent watersheds became the object of technical planning assistance from the Agriculture Department, under a soil conservation project. The Soil Conservation Service was to prepare a watershed work plan for the area under the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act. (Week of March 2-8, 1969):

* At a special meeting of the Howard County Council, state prison inspector Joseph Egberg stated the Howard County Jail was a "substandard" facility, becoming "more inadequate as the days go by." He urged the commissioners to continue their efforts toward constructing a new detention center, planned for a 10-acre parcel adjacent to the county office buildings. (The then-proposed site for the detention center is now the site of the County District Court building.)

50 Years Ago (Week of Feb. 27-March 4, 1944):

* The body of a newborn baby girl was discovered near the intersection of Featherbed Lane and Old Route 40. The mutilated body, which was wrapped in newspaper, appeared to have been thrown from a passing car.

* The widow of the late Rep. Stephen W. Gambrill, a Howard

County native, christened a Liberty ship named for her husband at the Fairfield Shipyard in Baltimore.

Information for this column was compiled by Diane Mullaly from the Howard County Historical Society library.