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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

New details emerged in the saga of a Northport wife charged with attempting to blow her husband to smithereens with dynamite.

Apparently, relations had been somewhat strained for quite a while in the remote cabin.

In trial, Mr. Hope testified that a few weeks earlier, Mrs. Hope had handed him a meat pie for dinner. Suspicious, he fed it to the cat.

The cat went paws up.

At some point, the couple walled off the homestead down the middle, with Mr. Hope taking one side and Mrs. Hope the other. Mrs. Hope had to move her bed into the loft of the chicken coop.

One night, she called to him to bring a pan of water up to the loft. Against his better judgment, he complied. He went up the ladder and lifted the trap door when a shotgun discharged, barely missing him. The shotgun had been rigged with tripwires.

Mrs. Hope denied all of these charges. She also said she had nothing to do with the explosion that went off underneath the cabin. She was out feeding the cows.

“What’s the matter, Jim?” she said as she ran up to the flaming wreckage. “Hast the oil can blown up?”

“Oil can be damned,” he replied. “You tried to blow me up with dynamite.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1981: Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female Supreme Court justice.