Jim Kershner’s This Day in History

From our archives, 100 years ago

Spokane postal officials reported that they handled 25,000 valentines on Valentine’s Day 1915.

That amounted to three valentines for every regular piece of mail handled. They said that was about on par with recent years.

Meanwhile, Spokane florists reported a larger-than-ever demand for cut flowers and potted plants, many of them decorated with “red hearts and gilt darts.”

Some florists noted a relatively new development: men ordering flowers by wire, for wives who happened to be out of the city.

From the fire beat: The Spokane Fire Department was extra cautious while extinguishing a fire in the basement of the old Club Cafe, at 112 N. Howard St.

Why the caution?

This was the same basement in which workmen had come across a hissing nest of rattlesnakes and one king cobra a few months before. The snakes had been part of an abandoned “reptile freak museum.”

Some of those snakes were killed or captured in that earlier incident, but workmen reported that some of the snakes had slithered down through the floorboards and escaped.

Firemen were well aware of the snake peril, but fortunately, the fire was “extinguished without disturbing a snake.”