Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Everybody knew that football was a dangerous sport in 1912, but this was ridiculous.

A 17-year-old football player from Dodds Station, on the Medical Lake-Cheney interurban line, was shot in the leg as he was about to kick a football.

Apparently, a fellow player thought it would be funny to shoot the ball with a rifle right before the boy kicked it. Unfortunately, his aim was bad and he shot his friend in the ankle with a .32-caliber bullet.

The injured boy was in the hospital.

From the immigration beat: Spokane’s superintendent of schools appeared before the Webster School PTA to warn of an impending menace: a flood of “aliens.”

By that, he meant foreigners. He said that the opening of the Panama Canal would result in the “arrival of an incalculable number of foreigners” into the Northwest. He warned parents that the time to prepare the schools for this influx was already at hand.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1620: Peregrine White was born aboard the Mayflower in Massachusetts Bay; he was the first child born of English parents in present-day New England. … 1969: The Nixon administration announced a halt to residential use of the pesticide DDT as part of a total phaseout.