Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

About 950 “foreigners” were attending night school at Spokane high schools to learn English. 

The teachers said the most numerous nationality were the Greeks, followed in order by the Italians, the Germans and the Scandinavians, each with more than 100 students. The only European nationality not represented was Portuguese.

“I find that the majority of the Italians and the Greeks have good educations in their own language, and many speak French nicely, therefore it is easy for them to get our language,” one teacher said. “We have had only one complaint during the six months of the present night school, and that was when one fellow spit on the floor in one of the halls. As a rule, they are cleaner than the boys and girls of the day school, and they are always polite and come with their best clothes on.”

Another teacher said many of them come to school directly from their jobs and bring food with them. Often, they are tired from having put in a hard day’s work. Some had to sell their textbooks at the end of the session, because they “needed a few cents to get something to eat.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1806: Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, began their journey back east. … 1965: America’s first two-person space mission took place as Gemini 3 blasted off with astronauts Virgil I. Grissom and John W. Young aboard for a nearly five-hour flight.