Jim Kershner’s This Day in History

From our archives, 100 years ago

Several baby bears, born just a month earlier, were returned to their outdoor cages at the Manito Park Zoo from their indoor winter quarters.

Youngsters gathered around the cages, hoping to catch a glimpse of the bears.

“They are reported to be about the size of a small dog, and amusing in their antics,” The Spokesman-Review reported.

Tobe, a young mountain lion, was also reported to be pacing restlessly in its cage. This was a matter for some alarm, since Tobe had escaped not long ago and had to be retrieved from a tree in a nearby yard.

From the police files: A man named Pat McNamara, “a devotee of Bacchus,” was hauled before police court for drunkenness and gave his age as 35.

The only problem: He had been in police court three days earlier and gave his age as 36. When asked to explain what happened to the extra year, the paper quoted him as saying, in dialect, “Shure, I must’ve lost it. I’ve grown a year younger in the last night and I’m getting more kiddish every minute.”

Also on this date

1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the first of his 30 radio “fireside chats,” telling Americans what was being done to deal with the nation’s economic crisis.