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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

This day in history: Tom Foley’s rise to prominence was just getting started

 (S-R archives)
By Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review

From 1975: U.S. Rep. Thomas Foley, the district’s Democratic congressman, was expected to be appointed to a key position in the new Congress: the chairmanship of the House Agriculture Committee.

“Many observers feel the agriculture committee is the hottest committee in the House this session,” The Spokesman-Review wrote. “More congressmen are seeking to be on this committee this year than any other committee.”

The reason? High domestic food prices and an unstable world food situation.

“Foley’s rise to power in the House has been an extremely swift one,” noted the Associated Press in an accompanying story. “He was first elected to Congress just a decade ago, taking office in 1965.”

From 1925: Hannah Hinsdale, the Society page columnist for The S-R, was amused by the photos of fashionable skiers at St. Moritz or Lake Placid.

“Spokane, when it has a chance at winter sports, has no time for Lake Placid accoutrements,” she wrote. “The boys find their skating shoes and an extra pair of wool socks and go strutting through the drifts to Cannon Hill Park or Manito. The women put on golf knickers and borrow their sons’ stocking caps.”

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1919: The Paris peace conference (aka the Versailles peace conference) opens to draw up the treaties formally ending the Great War (WWI).

1943: Soviets announce they have broken the long siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany by opening a narrow land corridor, though the siege would not be fully lifted until a year later.