Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

The children’s librarian at the Spokane Library compiled a special Christmas list of the “100 Best Books for Boys and Girls.”

It’s surprising how many titles are still children’s favorites. For instance, the list included Beatrix Potter’s “Peter Rabbit” books, the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales, the Grimms’ fairy tales and Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas.”

Some of the other titles may have fallen a little further out of popular favor, such as Hawthorne’s “Tanglewood Tales,” Kingsley’s “Water Babies,” Lamb’s “Adventures of Ulysses,” Palmer Cox’s “Brownies, Their Book,” and Ruskin’s “King of the Golden River.”

The list for older children included a number of authors still beloved today, including Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Miguel de Cervantes, Daniel DeFoe and Robert Louis Stevenson. The list also included Plutarch and Sir Walter Scott.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, conducted the first successful manned powered-airplane flights near Kitty Hawk, N.C., using their experimental craft, the Wright Flyer.

1938: German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission by splitting the nuclei of uranium into lighter elements while performing experiments in Berlin.