Since the beginning of the year, Melanie Steele has paid $1 million for a home in Chenal Valley; $385,000 for a house in Canal Pointe and $92,000 for the lot next door; $357,500 for a house in the Lakewood section of North Little Rock; and $80,000 for a house that she then moved off its lot in Indian Hills. All in cash. read more >

As an officer of Arkansas Casino Corp., the Dallas civil trial attorney feared that what happened in 1998 would happen again. That year, the company failed to round up enough signatures to put an initiative before the voters that would allow it to operate six casinos in Arkansas as well as pave the way for a state-run lottery and legalize charitable bingo. read more >

It’s easy to forget now, but Wal-Mart wasn’t always the dominant discount retailer in the world. As late as 1979, the Bentonville chain arguably wasn’t even the dominant Arkansas discounter. That effectively changed the morning of Friday, Dec. 21, 1979, when a Cessna 421 twin-engine plane carrying three vice presidents of Sterling Stores Inc. slammed into a fog-covered hill 4 miles southwest of Locust Grove, near Batesville. read more >

On Oct. 19, 1991, the newly christened Arkansas Democrat-Gazette landed on doorsteps and in the newspaper boxes of the state’s new media landscape. Having whipped its nemesis, the Democrat-Gazette pushed ahead, working to take in advertising dollars left homeless when the Gazette collapsed and selling the mantra, “The Best of Both.” read more >