Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

It was a busy day for police, to be sure. From the front page we have one story about a man who shot at his mother and stepfather in a dispute over wood used to build a chicken fence, and another about some thieves who cracked the safe at Spokane Table Supply near downtown, stealing $200 – and dining on champagne and “fancy sardines and preserves” as they worked.

A few pages later, we read about a fight at a lodging house on Front Avenue that sent a man to jail and another to the hospital with multiple wounds inflicted by a broken beer bottle. Oh, and both men were naked at the time of the fight.

Then there was this headline: “Small boys play catch with dynamite; mother faints.” Apparently some contractors had left the dynamite at a job site on Second Avenue, where a group of boys found it. A Spokane police officer happened upon the boys tossing the explosive among them. It then dropped on the rocky street. As the story states, “It was estimated that the explosive would have blown the quintet to eternity had it exploded.” Fortunately for them, and the distressed mother, it did not.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1948: President Harry S. Truman signed into law the Marshall Plan, designed to help European allies rebuild after World War II and resist communism.