100 years ago in Spokane: Daily Chronicle runs photo of 20-year-old Bing Crosby

The Spokane Daily Chronicle ran one of its earliest photos of a young Harry L. Crosby Jr., soon to be known as Bing.

Under the headline, “Have Comedy Roles in Gonzaga Play,” was a photo of 20-year-old Crosby and his co-star Mike Pecarovich, who had been cast in the Gonzaga Dramatic Club’s production of “It Pays to Advertise.”

“Both young men have had considerable experience in thespian endeavors, and both are capable of handling comedy and dramatic situations,” the Chronicle wrote.

Only one, of course, would go on to win the Oscar for Best Actor a couple of decades later.

From the bird beat: A “brown-headed eagle” attacked a 12-year-old boy at a ranch outside of Sandpoint, according to the boy’s mother.

“The eagle did not hurt the boy much because a dog came to the little fellow’s rescue,” said a correspondent.

The boy’s mother then got out a rifle and shot the eagle. It had a wingspan of seven feet and was on display at a Sandpoint store.

From the workingmen’s beat: The Chronicle sent reporter to ask the city’s transient workers (mostly loggers and laborers) whether they were in favor of a proposal to start a workingmen’s club.

Most of them felt such a club would be fine, but they questioned the need.

“Any pool hall can furnish that much entertainment,” one of them noted.

“The men have plenty of opportunity now to get together and play pool and cards and listen to a mechanical piano or phonograph,” one woodsman said. “And they can go to the public library, like anyone else, if they have a hankering for reading. Most of the fellows from the woods don’t do much reading when they’re in town. They get plenty of that in the woods.”