Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

An ad in The Spokesman-Review featured this headline: “Hooray! Baby to Rule the House – No Longer Do Women Fear the Greatest of All Human Blessings.”

The ad was for the “well-known and time-honored remedy, Mother’s Friend.” This was an ointment that eased “those much-talked-of pains that are said to precede child-bearing.”

“This is a penetrating, external application that at once softens and makes pliant the abdominal muscles and ligaments,” the ad said. “They naturally expand without the slightest strain, and thus not only banish all tendency to nervous, twitching spells, but there is an entire freedom from nausea, discomfort, sleeplessness and dread that so often leave their impress upon the babe.”

From the weather beat: Spokane hit 4 degrees below zero, the coldest temperature recorded so far for the winter of 1913-14.

But that was nothing compared to Genesee, Idaho, which hit 23 below zero, and Havre, Mont., which hit 40 below.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1973: Dixy Lee Ray, who in 1976 became Washington’s governor, was appointed by President Richard Nixon to be the first woman to head the Atomic Energy Commission.