100 years ago in Spokane: Famed scientist tells LC students that Martians are smarter than earthlings

From our archives, 100 years ago

Newlyweds Juanita Moore of Davenport and Shannon W. Smith of Illinois recounted their unusual – and soaking wet – method of meeting.

According to the bride, she met her husband on the shores of Medical Lake. He was a traveling salesman dealing in periodicals, and he was in Medical Lake on business. Juanita and her girlfriends saw Smith on the lakeshore and, for some unexplained reason, decided that “he should be given a good ducking.”

In this case, ducking was a synonym for dunking. So the girls ganged up on him and “ducked” him into Medical Lake.

Juanita explained what happened next.

“After the chance meeting and the ducking, letters passed between my husband and me and he came to Davenport and last night he popped the question and today I got mama’s consent and – well, at noon today we were married at the home of my parents in Davenport,” she said.

After the wedding, she told a reporter with a laugh, “Well I guess I am ducked for life.”

From the outer space beat: Dr. Percival Lowell, head of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, informed the students of Lewis and Clark High School that “the inhabitants of the planet Mars are more intelligent than those on the earth.”

Why?

“Because they have accomplished engineering feats that are visible to us,” he said in a lecture.

However, we should not jump to the conclusion that these brilliant Martians, who constructed “canals,” look exactly like us. “It may be that the ants or lizards are the dominant intelligent beings and that if there are animals similar to the human beings of the earth, they are of minor importance.”