This day in history: Major leaguer Frank Howard returned to manage Spokane Indians. Accused bootlegger faces new allegation

From 1975: Frank Howard, the “gentle giant” of baseball, was named the new manager of the Spokane Indians minor league team.

This was a homecoming of sorts for Howard, who played with the Indians in 1959. He was remembered for hitting some of the longest homers ever at Spokane’s Fairgrounds Baseball Park. He won the Sporting News Minor League Player of the Year Award in 1959.

He started the 1960 season with the Indians but was soon promoted to the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he won the National League Rookie of the Year award.

From 1925: Tony Bossio already had a long list of legal troubles involving liquor and bootlegging. Now, he was facing a further charge: breaking up another man’s marriage and alienating the affections of the man’s wife.

Ralph Saccomanno filed a $25,000 damage suit against Bossio, claiming that he was living happily with is wife “until the alleged bootlegger began coming to his home in his absence.”

Saccomanno said he was away working on the railroad to support his wife and four children. Bossio began “showing the wife improper attentions until she became wholly estranged.” She then obtained a divorce.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1930: Elijah Muhammad forms the Nation of Islam in Detroit.

1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas.

2005: Angela Merkel becomes first female Chancellor of Germany.