100 years ago in Spokane: Saloon men find new work

From our archives,

100 years ago

A Sandpoint jury took only 15 minutes to declare Dennis O’Leary innocent in the murder of O.G. Hossler.

According to O’Leary’s own testimony, he came home unexpectedly and found Hossler in his home.

“Hossler, what are you doing in my wife’s bed?” he asked him.

When Hossler tried to draw a gun from under a pillow, O’Leary emptied his own gun into Hossler. O’Leary turned himself in and claimed self-defense. The jury apparently agreed with his self-defense claim.

O’Leary was a former clerk of the Montana Senate.

From the prohibition beat: Spokane saloon men were scrambling for new careers in anticipation of statewide prohibition on Jan. 1.

Gust Pearson, owner of the Stockholm Bar, had his future already mapped out. He was completing arrangements to convert the Stockholm Bar into a savings bank, with himself as “president and general factotum.”

Pearson bought the charter of the Land Title Bank, which had been dormant for a few years.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1938: Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in a pogrom that became known as “Kristallnacht.”

1965: The great Northeast blackout began as a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours left 30 million people in seven states and part of Canada without electricity.