50 years ago in Expo history: A Folk Festival crowned multiple winners in various events
A $9,000 purse was at stake on the final day of the two-day logging championship event at Expo ‘74’s Folklife Festival.
Winners were crowned in 10 categories, including ax-throwing, standing block chop, log-rolling, springboard chop, tree-climb and double-buck.
It was a field of mostly male contestants, but Lorrie Law, of Clarkston, Washington, took second place in the log-rolling event, which The Spokesman-Review declared as a victory for “women’s lib.”
Over in the Chicano section of the Folklife Festival, a different kind of event was taking place. It was a piñata-breaking event, featuring a hand-crafted piñata and a crowd of hungry kids.
A blindfolded boy eventually succeeded in smashing the piñata, but he did not realize he had done so and “kept flailing away, banging the kids thrashing around him.”
From 100 years ago: Anna Corbin, the widow of Spokane railroad magnate D.C. Corbin, was released from Eastern State Hospital at Medical Lake, where she had been committed since 1921 after attempting to burn her own mansion down.
Her brother had petitioned the court for her release. She was released into the custody of Mr. and Mrs. John Sunderling, and a $2,000 bond was posted for “Mrs. Corbin’s conduct.”
She was to be in the Sunderlings’ custody indefinitely, “until further order of the court.”
Also on this day
(From onthisday.com)
1888: Chile annexes Easter Island in the Pacific.