Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 75 years ago

The manager of Northwest Airlines spoke at a conference in Spokane in 1935 and reported that the planes between Spokane and Seattle had been carrying capacity loads for the last several months.

In fact, passenger traffic had jumped so dramatically, he made a bold prediction: “The time is near when travel … will warrant the use of planes of 25 to 30 passenger capacity.”

From the alcohol beat: Prohibition was long gone by 1935, but a group of stalwart “drys” in Spokane had not given up on it. They met at a local church and made plans to bring Prohibition back to the nation.

Their argument: That the nation had not given Prohibition a fair try and it had never been properly enforced. Now that alcohol was legal again, it was making insidious inroads into family life.

A temperance proponent said that churchgoing folk had stopped teaching about the evils of alcohol in Sunday school.

“Now they squirm when their own sons become drunkards and their daughters marry drunkards,” he said. “Whose sons and daughters did you think would become drunkards?”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1963: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at a civil rights rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.