Jim Kershner’s This Day in History

Thu., Feb. 19, 2015

By Jim Kershner jimkershner@comcast.net

From our archives, 100 years ago

State Sen. Richard A. Hutchinson, of Spokane, introduced a bill to switch the state capital from Olympia to Seattle.

Why?

“Olympia is the most inaccessible place in the state,” he said. The Legislature had to “adjourn on Fridays so half the members could get home for Sunday.”

His bill was prompted by the recent passage of a multimillion-dollar bond issue to build new facilities in Olympia. If the state had to spend that kind of money, he said, “we ought to give the people a chance to put the capital where it would do some good.”

Not surprisingly, some King County legislators were all for the idea. Hutchinson proposed that the state’s voters decide the issue in a referendum.

From the medical beat: Doctors in Colfax operated on an 18-year-old Colfax woman for appendicitis.

After they made the incision, they made a startling discovery: a complete “transposition of the viscera.”

Her “heart was on the right side, her liver was on the left side and her appendix was on the left side,” the story said.

Unfortunately, gangrene set in and the woman died shortly afterward.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1963: “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan was first published by W.W. Norton & Co.

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