Jim Kershner’s This Day in History
From our archives, 100 years ago
Only two people in Spokane knew how to fly an airplane, said The Spokesman-Review, and one of them was retiring. B.C. McClellan, former head of the aviators school at Parkwater, ran a classified ad in the paper offering to sell his “Curtis type aeroplane.” He said he was giving up airplanes to enter the field of ballooning.
Delbert Wiley was the only other person in Spokane “known to be capable of handing” a plane. He had learned from McClellan.
So the market for the plane was restricted, but McClellan said he would give flying lessons to anyone willing to buy it.
From the farming beat: The beginning of the wheat harvest brought a return of a vexing problem: Fires and explosions in threshers and separators. In just one day, threshers caught fire near Waitsburg, near Colfax and near Walla Walla.
The previous year, numerous threshers exploded and caught fire, injuring farmers and starting wildfires. The problem was so serious, the assistant agricultural engineer of the U.S. Department of Agriculture arrived in Walla Walla to investigate. He planned to visit the scene of explosions as soon as they were reported. The explosions appeared to be caused by wheat smut.