1984: Armadillo Jack’s, a restaurant, opened in the Beale Street Landing building at Beale Street and Riverside Drive. The opening features armadillo races.

Meanwhile renovation and restoration work are underway at Calvary Episcopal Church, including a rebuilding of the church’s Aeolean-Skinner organ – the largest church organ in the Mid-South – and a renovation of Calvary’s Parish House to include an elevator, new library and courtyard. The church’s mural room, home to the Lenten season Waffle Shop, also doubles in size with the undertaking.

(Memphis News File/Lance Murphey)

1969: Groundbreaking for One Commerce Square, 31 stories built by the National Bank of Commerce and completed in 1972. Construction began the year before on the parking garage. The skyscraper itself is envisioned as a symbol that the bank is up to competing with Union Planters Bank and First National Bank, which both have new office buildings in the city’s skyline. The office space is to be shared by National Bank of Commerce and Plough Inc., whose founder, Abe Plough, also an investor in the bank, buys the site through a dummy corporation. But Plough Inc. would later build its own headquarters on Jackson Avenue. NBC was to pay a quarter of the $14 million cost of the project but wound up paying $10 million of the cost instead.

Source: “National Bank of Commerce: The First 120 Years” by Dr. Charles W. Crawford

1904: During one of the city’s periodic reform-driven campaigns against gambling and prostitution in Memphis, five deputy sheriffs raid a gambling den on DeSoto Street and arrest 40 men and women. The deputies tie those arrested together for a walk to the police station house and jail. But before the deputies can get their prisoners out of the gambling house, four underworld bosses led by Mike Haggerty draw guns on the deputies, disarm them, shoot them and free the prisoners. Two of the deputies are killed in the attack. Haggerty, George Honan – identified by one of the deputies before he died – George Deggs and Harry Keene are arrested. None is convicted. Only Honan goes to trial, and he is acquitted.

Source: “Memphis During The Progressive Era” by William Miller