This Day in History: Man discovers perils of internal combustion engine

From our archives, 100 years ago

E.H. Belden discovered – the hard way – one of the perils of the internal combustion engine.

He had put his car away in the garage for the winter, but he decided over the weekend it was nice enough to go for a drive. So he went to his enclosed garage and cranked up the engine. As fumes filled the garage, he passed out in the driver’s seat.

Some minutes later, his 13-year-old daughter Marion came out to the garage to call Belden in for dinner. She went back in the house and told her mother he didn’t answer her call. Her mother sent her back out and this time, she found him unconscious in the car.

Four physicians arrived at the house and worked on Belden for two hours before he regained consciousness. The doctors said he probably would recover with no ill effects. But they said he would never have recovered if he had been found 15 minutes later.

From the baptism file: One-year-old Maria Doulas – said to be “the first Greek child ever born in Spokane,” according to the paper – was baptized in the Greek Orthodox faith in Spokane.

She was the daughter of James Doulas and his wife, proprietors of a Greek coffeehouse on Bernard Street. A priest from Portland was brought in to perform the baptism at the Doulas home.