Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 50 years ago

A 41-year-old Spokane man staggered into Deaconess Hospital with a red, acid-scarred face – and proceeded to tell a story about being attacked by a mysterious assailant.

He said someone knocked him down, beat him, slashed him with a pocket knife and then, horribly, threw acid on his face.

But police became suspicious when they found the pocket knife in the victim’s own pocket. Before long the victim confessed that he had made it all up. He slashed his own clothes, rubbed his elbows on bricks to make them bleed and mixed a solution of lye cleanser and water and doused it on his face.

He said he did it because creditors were “breathing down his neck” and he thought this might gain him some sympathy. The man had invented an auto muffler that “purports to eliminate smog” and was unable to repay his investors.

From the sports beat: Bowling was big news in 1960. The front page of the sports section informed its readers that the Happy Hour Tavern bowling team had a “fancy 1024 scratch game” at the Valley Bowl and Wilma Mael bowled a 564 series for her team, Rene Studio of the Dance.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his group became the first men to reach the South Pole.