Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Fasting was a popular health fad in 1913, and one Spokane woman seemed to be taking it to extremes.

Mrs. F.W. McCann claimed that she had gone 54 days without “eating a morsel of food.”

Yet she continued to walk downtown and spend “a number of hours about the stores.”

Her doctor, A.T. Dodson, weighed her the day before and she “tipped the scales at 105 and a half pounds.” That was only 1 pound less than she weighed last week. She weighed 145 pounds when she started her fast.

She also claimed that she had “no longing for food.” The only thing she consumed, she said, was eight to 10 glasses of water a day.

From the medical beat: A Walla Walla veterinarian was found by his neighbors standing hatless and coatless in a gravel pit. When an officer asked him what he was doing there, he said he “was waiting to be buried in his grave.”

He was locked up on a sanity charge.

Also on this date:

(From the Associated Press)

1776: A group of Spanish missionaries settled in present-day San Francisco. … 1888: The public was first admitted to the Washington Monument. … 1940: Rock and roll legend John Lennon was born in Liverpool, England.