Jim Kershner’s This Day in History

From our archives, 50 years ago

Five Spokane teenagers were being held after what was described as a drunken Memorial Day destructive spree at two rural cemeteries.

The teenagers were accused of rampaging through the Moran Cemetery, ripping up flags and tipping over 17 gravestones. Then they went to the Valleyford Cemetery and started to dig up a grave. They were caught before they could finish the job.

“The nearest one of them could come to telling us why,” said a police captain, “was to say they thought it would be fun to dig up a body.”

From the political beat: Delegates were beginning to gather for the State Republican Convention to be held in Spokane.

Richard Nixon appeared to have the presidential nomination locked up, although there was still a scramble for the state’s delegates between some of the vice-presidential hopefuls, including Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater. In the end, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. would be named Nixon’s running mate that summer.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1888: The poem “Casey at the Bat,” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, was first published, in the San Francisco Daily Examiner. … 1937: The Duke of Windsor, who had abdicated the British throne, married Wallis Warfield Simpson in Monts, France.