Jim Kershner’s This Day in History

From our archives, 75 years ago

Spokane, reeling from the Great Depression in 1935, still managed to find plenty of ways to amuse itself.

The Tom Mix Circus, presided over by the man who was once the world’s top cowboy star, was drawing crowds under its big top, set up at Division Street and Jackson Avenue. Mix told reporters that it’s “a real circus, not simply a Tom Mix horse show.”

For one thing, it featured “200 girls” and “clowns cavort all over the three rings.” It also starred Sahara, the “largest elephant on earth.”

Mix, who helped create the Western movie craze, would release the last of his hundreds of movies that same year.

From the unemployment beat: However, the brutal nature of the Depression was illustrated by a photo a few days later. It showed a Naples, Idaho, father and son wearing backpacks. They had heard that pea pickers were wanted in Payette, Idaho. They were walking the entire 300 or more miles.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1533: Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, was crowned as Queen Consort of England. … 1792: Kentucky became the 15th state of the union. … 1796: Tennessee became the 16th state. … 1909: The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition opened in Seattle. … 1967: The Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”