This day in history: Spokane stamp collector said he was tortured in Moroccan prisons. Pioneer died after he drove off Kettle Falls ferry

From 1975: A Spokane stamp broker, John L. Benzie, 27, said he was tortured by Moroccan police until he confessed to “smuggling.”

After several days of having electrical wires attached to his feet, he agreed to plead guilty.

The result was six months in two Moroccan prisons, in which he’s slept on a floor with about 80 other men.

Benzie had served as Expo ’74’s chief of foreign stamp sales, and he was in Morocco buying stamps for a German stamp dealer.

Authorities confiscated about 6,000 Moroccan stamps worth $15. They also confiscated Benzie’s personal stamp collection, which he had been collecting since he was 10, worth $5,000. He said he had started to rebuild his collection.

The experience left him with an “added appreciation for freedom and conveniences of modern American life.”

From 1925: Frank Day, 70, a pioneer rancher in Stevens County, died when he drove his car off the Kettle Falls ferry and drowned.

Day had been having trouble with his car earlier that day. When he started down the grade to the boat, the ferryman said it appeared Day was not able to apply his brakes at all “and the car came to the boat at great speed, ran the length of the boat and against the chain at the end, breaking it and plunging into the river.”

Day jumped free of the car and tried to swim. The ferryman threw him a life preserver, but it did not reach him.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1860: South Carolina General Assembly votes 169-0 to secede from the United States, declaring itself an “independent commonwealth.”