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

From our archives, 100 years ago

A man suspected of shooting his wife and then committing suicide in the river startled everyone by showing up at the police station two days later, hungry and disheveled.

He turned himself in, stating the obvious (no, he did not fling himself into the river) and the not-so-obvious (no, he didn’t kill her, at least, not exactly).

“That shooting did not occur the way they say it did,” he said. “When it is the right time, I will tell the truth.”

However, his wife’s family said that the couple had been quarreling for months. The wife had finally filed for divorce. He repeatedly threatened to kill her. She had been living “in fear of him.”

A clarification from the fishing beat: In Wednesday’s history column, I mentioned that a fisherman pulled an 18-pound “char” from Lake Pend Oreille. I theorized that it was “probably a lake trout.”

Probably not.

An Idaho fisheries biologist wrote to say that lake trout were not introduced into that river system until 1912 and not into Lake Pend Oreille until 1925.

So the fish were almost certainly bull trout (commonly called Dolly Varden at the time), which are a native char. And yes, they can grow that big.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1942: The Pacific Battle of Midway began during World War II.