100 years ago in Spokane: Spectacle of second circus draws crowd of boys

The small boys of Spokane gathered to watch the Sells-Floto Circus – the second circus to hit Spokane in three days – set up its tents north of the courthouse.

Within two hours of the circus train arrival, “half a dozen big tents had been raised and the lot was full of wagons, horses, animals and scores of excited boys.”

The biggest excitement arrived when the animal wagons showed up.

“After the cages arrived, the keepers began to open them up, and the small boys were wild,” said The Spokesman-Review. “A round cage, drawn by half a dozen little mules, excited attention, and then when it was opened, proved to contain monkeys sporting on a Ferris wheel. A great uproar stirred the crowd when a truck drawn by half a dozen zebras arrived. It was filled with barking, howling, baying dogs of all kinds. … Half a dozen elephants drew an admiring throng, and a drove of camels were part of the menagerie.”

From the political beat: Judge J. Stanley Webster, Republican candidate for Congress, addressed a crowd in a “patriotic address” at First Methodist Episcopal Church.

“I have seen 30 pictures of Judas Iscariot, and no two of them looked alike,” he said. “But every one of them looked like the kaiser.”

Also on this date

(From Associated Press)

1991: President George H.W. Bush nominated federal appeals court judge Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, beginning an ultimately successful confirmation process marked by allegations of sexual harassment.