This day in history: Woman sought man to help her get her English inheritance. Yakima pool player earned enough to send kids to college

From 1976: Move over Minnesota Fats – Yakima Alex was making a good living as a professional pool player.

Alex Borunda, of Yakima, was “something of a legend among pool players from California to Cheyenne.”

The most he made at a game was $4,500, but “$3,000 and $4,000 nights have been many.” He said he put four kids through college with his winnings.

He had only one eye – he lost the other one at age 13 “in a disagreement with a barbed-wire fence.” But he said that was not a liability, because, just like shooting a gun, a pool player needed to close one eye to aim.

He said he could beat 499 out of 500 people in tournament.

From 1926: Sarah Jarvis of Spokane advertised in the Spokane Chronicle for a man to travel to England and collect her $100,000 inheritance.

She offered to pay $10,000 to a person willing to tackle the job.

Jarvis was convinced that between $100,000 and $150,000 was waiting for her at the Bank of England. She said that her grandfather’s will left the money to her father, who never collected it. Now she was in line to collect the money.

She said she needed to produce her birth certificate and her father’s, but she did not want to make the trip to London herself.

A “great number” of men had already offered to make the trip.

In other news, the former Rosamund Lee Shaw, now Mrs. Clifford Samuelson, was suing the Canby, Oregon, school district for libel.

Why? The district fired her after she married a 16-year-old student, Clifford Samuelson, in 2024 when she was 28. Before becoming a teacher, she had worked in newspapers in Spokane. Clifford Samuelson told the court that he pursued his teacher, not that other way around.

”I had difficulty in getting her to take this step,” he said on the stand.