This day in history: Potential mega concert with Beach Boys, Olivia Newton-John and more rejected by judge. Oakesdale was shaken by assault by acid.

From 1976: Superior Court Judge George Shields put a final end to plans for a gigantic rock festival at Holiday Hills near Liberty Lake.

The promoters, out of Lewiston, had predicted that 60,000 people would attend the event in the upcoming June. The promoters had floated the idea of bringing in acts such as Bob Dylan, the Eagles, the Beach Boys, John Denver and Olivia Newton-John.

The sheer size of the proposed festival was part of the problem. The Spokane County Commission already had refused to grant a permit because it would require more sheriff’s deputies for security than the county had in total. The promoters appealed, but the judge agreed with the county. He ruled that the county could supply only enough deputies for a crowd of 32,000 maximum.

Holidays Hills was a short-lived ski resort and recreation facility on Carson Hill, just west of Liberty Lake.

From 1926: A shocking acid-throwing assault had “greatly aroused the town of Oakesdale.”

It began when Mrs. A.W. Linville, wife of an Oakesdale hardware merchant, was “startled by the throwing of a ketchup bottle through the window of her home.” The bottle missed her. The next night, she went on to her porch to pick up a bottle of milk when “an unknown person hurled acid in her face.” She required days of treatment but escaped permanent injury.

Three nights later, someone threw “a missile” against her front door. She found “a roll containing a pair of rubber gloves, presumed to have been used by the acid thrower.”

“More than 100 persons of the town have been interviewed and admissions obtained from a number of women friends of Linville (the victim’s husband),” said The Spokesman-Review.

He was charged with “two statutory crimes,” unrelated to the acid-throwing incident. Yet he “avers he is the victim of a ‘frameup’ by detectives intent on involving him in the acid-throwing case.”

Detectives were also looking into other possible suspects. More arrests were “expected soon.”