Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

A Spokane man bought a pistol from a secondhand store and used it to shoot a hotel landlady in what he claimed was self-defense.

The landlady was in the hospital in “precarious condition.”

The police claimed the suspect had a neurological or mental disorder. The man told police, when captured, that he could have killed all of the police officers but decided not to. He also refused to specify what provoked the shooting.

Meanwhile, the author of the column titled “Chinookers” on the editorial page weighed in by saying that “the indiscriminate sale of firearms” to “the insane and other irresponsibles” had again proven to be “a menace to society.”

From the gardening beat: An editorial cartoonist drew a front page picture of several forlorn dogs sitting on a sandlot baseball diamond watching boys engaged in the latest Spokane boyhood fad, gardening. The Spokesman-Review was sponsoring a kids’ gardening contest, with cash prizes. The boys in the cartoon, instead of playing baseball, were saying things like, “Hey, Freckles, me onions is up,” and “Gee whiz, the radishes are coming up swell.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1945: President Harry S. Truman announced on radio that Nazi Germany’s forces had surrendered.