100 years ago: Boy escapes custody, leaving clothes behind

The headline read: “Nude, Boy Steals Clothes, Escapes.”

The full story wasn’t quite so titillating. The boy, Harry Nashon, 17, was a parole violator from Miles City, Montana, who had been apprehended in Yakima. A Montana officer was transporting the boy on a train back to Miles City, but he apparently wasn’t guarding him sufficiently.

As they prepared to sleep in a Pullman coach, the officer made him take off his clothes and give them to him as a safeguard against the boy escaping. The boy, however, woke while the officer was asleep, crept through the darkened car, and stole a suit of clothes from another passenger. Then, fully clothed, he disembarked at Rathdrum, not to be seen again. Police suspected that he caught a westbound train to Spokane.

From the auto beat: A party of intrepid autoists, with a sign saying “Spokane or Bust,” arrived in Spokane after an adventurous trip from Iowa. They were a group from Edwards Manufacturing Co., which was moving from Iowa to Spokane.

“The trip was fierce,” said one of the party. They got stuck in three places and had to be pulled out. Floods in Montana forced them to change their route.

Also on this date

(From Associated Press)

1947: What’s regarded as the first modern UFO sighting took place as private pilot Kenneth Arnold, an Idaho businessman, reported seeing nine silvery objects flying in a “weaving formation” near Mount Rainier in Washington.