This day in history: Warm weather doesn’t stop skiers for one ‘last pop’ down Mount Spokane; two dead in Spokane River accident

From 1975: The high temperature in Spokane was 84 degrees, but that didn’t prevent skiers from making their final run down Mount Spokane.

The Snowblaze ski area opened its chairlifts in the afternoon “so skiers could take their last pop.”

The high temperatures were also causing rivers to rise.

The turbulent Spokane River had claimed two lives over the weekend, when two men were thrown out of a rubber raft near Mirabeau Park in Spokane Valley. The raft hit a bridge piling at Sullivan Road and threw four men into the river. Two were able to swim to shore, but the other two were missing and presumed drowned.

A search of the river had so far failed to turn up any evidence of the missing men.

From 1925: Charles Hedger, the city’s new commissioner of public safety, took office and immediately cut the city’s “dry squad” from seven men to five.

This seemed to confirm the charge that Hedger had been the “wet” candidate, that is, anti-Prohibition. Yet the police chief said that the police force would still be tough on bootleggers.

“The dry squad is not being decreased because we are going to loosen the strings on the liquor traffic,” the police chief said, “but because we cannot spare seven men from patrol duty.”

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1953: The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey, London, takes place.

1989: As many as 10,000 Chinese soldiers are blocked by 100,000 citizens protecting students demonstrating for democracy in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.