An eerie intersection of news and history

The scrapblog editor had an deja-vu moment while editing this story for Wednesday's Star Tribune. It's the sad tale of a Monticello man who died of rabies after being bitten by a bat. It said: He is the fifth person to die of rabies in Minnesota in the past century. Other victims died in 1917, 1964, 1975 and 2000. We remembered that Alverna used to tell the tale of a 10-year-old cousin, Gary Sprick, who died of rabies in the mid-1960s after being attacked by a rabid skunk in a tent he was sleeping in outside the family farm near Rochester, Minn. According to her, Gary was allergic to anti-rabies medication and there was nothing doctors could do. We looked up his death certificate on the Minnesota Historical Society's online death certificates index and found this: SPRICK, GARY L. Date of Birth: 04/18/1954 Place of Birth: MINNESOTA Date of Death: 09/01/1964 County of Death: OLMSTED Death certificate No. 1964-MN-013989 And this sad little story was in the Star Tribune's "morgue," its basement library of old newspaper clips: