Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

For the first day in two years, not a single drunkenness or vagrancy charge was listed on Spokane’s court docket. The Spokane police chief said it was proof that “the unemployed, the poor and destitute unfortunates are better cared for today than ever before in the history of Spokane.”

The chief said the city’s charitable institutions, including workhouses and missions, were giving men a “warm place to sleep” during the current cold snap and that “they are kept out of the saloons, where the petty thievery and crooked games are hatched.”

From the moving picture beat: Meanwhile, in Walla Walla, men had discovered a place more entertaining than a mission to get out of the cold.  They were spending all day at the motion picture shows.

These “motion picture fiends,” as the paper described them, returned day after day to Walla Walla’s two theaters and stayed for hours.

The theater manager said the men preferred the movies to the saloons, and he was happy to have them as long as the theaters were not too crowded.

Also on this date

From the Associated Press

1896: An Austrian newspaper reported the discovery by physicist Wilhelm Roentgen of a type of radiation that came to be known as X-rays. … 1925: Nellie T. Ross of Wyoming became America’s first female governor.