This day in history: Daredevil hoping to plunge over Spokane Falls foiled by debt. Father and son drowned at Chilco Lake

From 1975: Would-be daredevil Terry Brauner was foiled in his third attempt to plunge over the Spokane Falls, after his homemade inner-tube craft and air tanks were seized by Stevens County deputies.

He owed $775 to a Spokane door manufacturer.

“The sheriff said the falls expedition seemed to mean a lot to Brauner, and he figured the seizure of his diving equipment would ‘jar him loose’ into paying his bill,” said The Spokesman-Review.

The sheriff said if Brauner didn’t pay his debts, he would auction off the inner-tube craft.

“Personally, I would bid as high as 10 cents,” joked the sheriff.

The first time Brauner plunged over the falls, a year earlier, “he almost drowned when he lashed-together inner tubes separated in a whirlpool.” A second attempt was thwarted when he was arrested on the river bank.

Brauner said he still hoped to make a third attempt, after he recovered his inner tubes.

From 1925: A father and son both lost their lives on Chilco Lake near Garwood, Idaho, after the father tried to save his son, 18, from drowning.

The son, Orville Mills, was in a boat, attempting to drag a dead horse from the lake. The boat sprang a leak and began to sink. The father, Oscar Mills, on shore only 16 feet away, threw the boy a rope, but the boy fell out of the boat in an attempt to catch the rope.

“He was unable to swim and his father jumped in the lake in an effort to save the lad,” said The Spokesman-Review.

When the bodies were recovered later, “the boy had one end of the rope around his body and the father had the other end grasped in his hand.”