Jim Kershner’s This Day in History
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From our archives, 100 years ago
The Spokane County Good Roads Association escorted Washington’s Gov. Marion E. Hay and other state officials on an auto journey to Coeur d’Alene.
The association was promoting an ambitious plan: “To build a highway, lined with apple and elm trees, between Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, a distance of 31 miles.”
The name of this project: the Apple Way.
The Good Roads people said that the plan was gaining praise far and wide “as the coming wonder of the country.”
The road came to fruition in 1912 and parts of it are still known as Appleway.
From the police files: A distraught young mother from North Yakima took her life by throwing herself into the swollen Naches River.
She had been frightened by reports of the “possible destruction of the world through the proximity of Halley’s Comet.”
The comet was to appear around April 20, 1910, and was the subject of much scientific – and nonscientific – speculation.
Also on this date
(From the Associated Press)
1830: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was organized by Joseph Smith in Fayette, N.Y. … 1896: the first modern Olympic games formally opened in Athens, Greece.