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

From our archives, 100 years ago

The Spokane Daily Chronicle was loaded with sensational stories that didn’t quite live up to their billing:

• A headline screamed “City Council May Impeach the Mayor,” although the story admitted this was just a “rumor.” The issue was a complicated one, involving the letting of a contract to build the Lincoln Heights Reservoir. The council ordered the mayor to let the contract, but he refused on the quite reasonable grounds that a new form of government – a commission form of government – had already been approved by voters. The council was a lame duck.

• An “Austrian” railroad laborer was arrested in the case of the assassination of Spokane’s former acting police chief. He allegedly went to the widow’s home and told her he knew who the assassin was. It turned out later this was another false lead.

• The paper predicted a renewal of the “fight” between the state’s two most prominent suffragists, Emma Smith Devoe and May Arkwright Hutton. Hutton dismissed this notion by saying, “I have nothing to say on this matter.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1861: Alabama became the fourth state to withdraw from the Union. … 1964: U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued the first government report that said smoking may be hazardous to one’s health.