Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives,

100 years ago

The Spokane School Board declared that all of Spokane’s high school students would be jammed into one school – North Central High School – when school resumed in the fall.

The city’s only other high school, South Central High School, was in ruins after a massive fire destroyed it a day earlier, on June 21, 1910.

The school board said it would take at least a year to build a new school (it ended up taking two). The board’s only option was to divide the school day into morning and afternoon sessions at North Central. The building was expected to accommodate all 2,300 of the city’s high school students.

From the graveyard beat: City employees digging a sewer ditch in Browne’s Addition unearthed two human skeletons on Coeur d’Alene Street between Second and Pacific avenues. One skeleton appeared to be American Indian, the other probably not, since it had false teeth, including a gold one.

Old-timers said the site was a cemetery in Spokane’s earliest days. They told reporters that the cemetery was moved about 1886 – but, evidently, not all of the graves were moved.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, more popularly known as the GI Bill.