Jim Kershner’s This day in history » On the Web: spokesman.com/topics/local-history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Eng Fong, the “Noodle King” of Spokane, announced plans to introduce Chinese noodles and chop suey to formerly hostile territory: Wallace and the Coeur d’Alene mining district.

Apparently, “union labor prejudice and pioneer tradition” had combined to make the Silver Valley an inhospitable place for the Chinese and their restaurants. Dutch Jake Goetz, a prominent Spokane saloon man and hotelkeeper, told the newspaper that “peeved” residents of the Coeur d’Alene mining district once took a firehose and blasted the last Chinese cook out of town. None had risked the area since.

But Fong promised to “placate the old-time prejudice.” He also pointed out that his Spokane restaurants were already full of visiting Wallace residents.

From the college prank beat: Washington State College administrators in Pullman finally identified six male students as the instigators of a misguided midnight prank in which they broke into the “girl’s dormitory,” overturned the beds and dumped the frightened women on the floor. Three men were expelled and three were suspended indefinitely.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1986: Two American servicemen and a Turkish woman were killed in the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque, an incident which prompted a U.S. air raid on Libya more than a week later.