Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Autos were tremendously exciting in 1913 – although that doesn’t entirely explain the following sad story.

A Medical Lake father announced the big news to his family: He was going to purchase an automobile.

Dora Koenig, 17, was so excited over the news that she – well, she dropped dead.

The coroner ruled that the death was due to “acute dilatation of the heart,” brought on by the excitement. Another doctor noted that “the family is apparently subject to heart trouble” and that Dora’s sister had “succumbed under similar circumstances a year ago.”

From the runaway beat: Ava Barnham, 11, had a bad habit of – in her own words – “running away from home and staying all night and I do not know what makes me do it.”

She recently ran away and was found sleeping on a neighbor’s lawn.

So her father chained her to a 100-pound block of wood and padlocked her ankle.

The father said if anybody had any other plan to to cure the girl of her habit, he “would be glad to make use” of it.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1776: Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed to the Continental Congress a resolution stating “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.”