Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Six strong and hearty young men carried Mrs. Harry Cunningham, the desperately ill wife of a forest ranger, 16 miles through the Cascade Mountains.

Mrs. Cunningham became ill with fever in her lonely mountain home near Mount Rainier. The six “boys” volunteered to carry her 16 miles to the nearest road. They started the journey at 5 a.m. and carried her on a trail that was “in places almost perpendicular” and over a 2,500-foot elevation gain.

It was a difficult traverse even for a “man without a load.”

Six hours later, they walked into Longmire, Wash., where an automobile took the woman to Ashford and then to Seattle.

From the accident beat: George Keller of Spokane was attempting to show his poolroom pals how big league pitchers “throw the crossfire ball,” a sidearm pitch.

He demonstrated “so vigorously” that he threw his arm out of joint and police had to come and administer first aid.

They “put the arm back where it belonged and Keller went back to show his friends the genesis of the crossfire ball by means of diagrams.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1969: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, N.Y., wound to a close after three nights with a midmorning set by Jimi Hendrix.