This day in history: Missoula man rigs Rambler to burn wood as fuel; Judge fines lumber companies for price-fixing

From 1975: Lance Cyr, a Missoula forestry student, found a creative solution to the gas crisis. He built a wood-burning Rambler.

A 55-gallon drum served as a firebox in what used to be the trunk of the 1960 Rambler. A complex series of pipes fed unburned gases into the carburetor.

“It’s got some drawbacks,” admitted Cyr.

Those included power loss, reduced driving speed, and – probably the biggest drawback – the need to stoke the fire while driving down the freeway.

Brenda Cyr, his wife, had the most clear-eyed view of the project.

“I’m expecting it to blow up,” she said.

From 1925: Federal Judge J. Stanley Webster in Spokane fined 11 lumber companies $37,300 for “violations of the Sherman anti-trust law,” specifically, price-fixing.

The companies plead guilty to having “fixed and established arbitrary and non-competitive prices” for western red cedar poles.

The 11 companies, including three based in Spokane, were accused of buying a controlling interest in the Western Lumber and Pole Co. in Spokane, which had formerly been in competition with the defendants.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1943: Streptomycin, the first antibiotic to treat tuberculosis is found by researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

1987: Stock markets around the world crash, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which fell 508.32 points (22%), 4.5 times the previous record. The day would become known as Black Monday.