This day in history: Metric system would rule in Spokane classrooms. Messenger fired 5 shots at auto pirates

From 1976: Spokane schools were implementing a new metric-system curriculum, anticipating that the entire country would gradually shift from English measurements to the metric measurements.

“The real reason for the changeover is economic,” said a district math consultant. “Industry is changing so we must change. The longer we wait, the more of a crisis there will be.”

The English system would still be taught, he said, but with far less emphasis. A “decreasing reliance on the present system will eventually lead to a metric domination in the district.”

From 1926: “Auto pirates” – bandits in cars who grabbed people off the street and robbed them – chose the wrong victim when they attacked George G. Crane near Fifth Avenue and Freya Street.

Crane, an American Express messenger, had just alighted from a streetcar when a car drew up beside him and a man commanded him to “stick ’em up.”

Crane was armed with a pistol, and he fired “five shots from close range.”

“One of the bandits fired back twice, then all three vanished into the night from the opposite side of the car.”

They abandoned the car, which turned out to have been stolen a short time earlier.

In other news, the Spokane City Commission approved the proposed site for a new civic auditorium between Wall and Howard streets and between Fourth and Fifth avenues. That’s the current site of the Lewis and Clark High School cafeteria building.

Mayor Charles Fleming advised the council to pursue an option to buy the property but not actually buy it until after the fall election when voters would determine the fate of building an auditorium.