100 years ago in Spokane: ‘Tarzan of the mat’ and jiu-jitsu artist both too good to beat

The big wrestling match at the Auditorium Theater between Marin Plestina, “The Tarzan of the Mat,” and Taro Miyake, the Japanese “jiu-jitsu artist,” proved to be entertaining but also unsatisfying.

It ended in a draw after almost two hours, because neither man could keep the other down long enough. “Try as he might,” Miyake (sometimes spelled Miyaku) “could not tip the big fellow.”

Yet Miyake “did a lot of tricks that sent the Italian spinning more than once, and kept the crowd amused.”

The entertainment began right at the opening bell.

“Plestina did a couple of cartwheels, which brought a big laugh from the good-sized crowd,” a correspondent for The Spokesman-Review wrote. “With apparently little effort, (Miyake) would twist his legs around those of Plestina and at once the big fellow would be cutting capers in the farthest corner or picking himself up from under the heels of the spectators.”

Plestina was billed as the claimant of the world heavyweight title, weighing in at 215 pounds. Miyake, at only 175 pounds, claimed the heavyweight jiu-jitsu championship.

From the accident beat: A duck-hunting expedition turned tragic on the Kettle River.

Harvey Dunn, 15, was getting into his boat, dragging his gun behind him, when the gun accidentally discharged. The boy was shot through the heart and died immediately.

He was an eighth grader at Irving School in Spokane and his father was the chief dispatcher of the Great Northern Railway at Marcus.On this day

(From Associated Press)

1960: The first televised debate between presidential nominees took place as Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard M. Nixon faced off from Chicago.

1991: Four men and four women began a two-year stay inside a sealed-off structure in Oracle, Arizona, called Biosphere 2. (They emerged from Biosphere on this date in 1993.)