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 ran a special column every week for enthusiasts of a relative novelty: the automobile.

One item was about a group of Spokane residents who drove a Croxton-Keton auto to impressive heights: “within two miles of the top of Mt. Baldy.”

Mt. Baldy was the name for Mt. Spokane in those days.

Another item was about two men who set a new auto speed record between Murray and Wallace, Idaho. They covered the 19.6 miles in the unprecedented time of one hour and 17 minutes. That’s about 16 miles per hour. The road was a “particularly rough one” and “contained two steep grades.”

The same two men later drove north of Eagle, Idaho, to the Jack Waite mine “over territory an automobile had never crossed.” It took them five hours to cover 11 miles.

They probably could have walked it faster.

From the poisoning file: An unknown man, found dead in a Harrington, Wash., boardinghouse, had an appalling amount of morphine in his stomach – more than the state chemist had ever seen. A cook at the boardinghouse was under arrest.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1881: Artist Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain.