50 years ago in Expo history: Canadians put on big show for Expo ‘74 crowd

A cast of nearly 1,000 – including bagpipers, drummers and Mounties – staged a show titled Spectacle Canadien at the Coliseum as part of Expo ’74’s Canada Week.

It was “ 2½ hours of pomp and pageantry,” according to The Spokesman-Review.

A massed band of 120 bagpipers played “Scotland the Brave” and 32 members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police “performed intricate cavalry drills on horses that didn’t miss a step.”

“Their infamous charge only lasted a few seconds because of the small Coliseum arena, and it isn’t something you’d want to get in the way of,” The S-R said.

From 100 years ago: Spokane was working hard to get a transcontinental air mail route in the region, but there were two competing plans.

One was to establish a feeder route from Elko, Nevada, to Pasco. Elko was on the existing New York to San Francisco route.

The other was to establish a direct northern air mail route, which would stop in Spokane on the way to the coast. The Spokane Chamber of Commerce announced that it was throwing its support to the northern route.

“We have worked for three years for the northern route, and we should not give it up,” a chamber spokesman said.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1949: The USSR performs its first nuclear test at Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR.

2005: Hurricane Katrina makes its second and third landfall as a Category 3 hurricane, devastating much of the U.S. Gulf Coast.