100 years ago: Prohibition officers say bootlegging in Spokane brought under control

Spokane was no longer the Northwest’s premier booze-running city.

Seattle took over the top spot for bootlegging, according to federal prohibition officers. Agents claimed that they had succeeded in stopping most of the overland smuggling traffic from Canada into Spokane. They had “driven 90 percent of the booze running to water routes.”

Those cross-border water routes usually culminate in Seattle. Agents said that liquor “export houses” in British Columbia were the source of most of the booze, and a move was afoot to close them down.

From the arson beat: Authorities were no longer so certain that two “thugs” set the RM Wade garage on fire a day earlier.

Percy Cook, the night foreman, said two thugs broke into the garage, and knocked him unconscious. When he awoke the garage was ablaze.

Police did not think that Cook was willingly lying to them. Instead, they believed that his memory was unreliable because of his head injury and dazed condition from the smoke. They were convinced that once his memory cleared up, he could tell them how the fire started.

So on this date

(From Associated Press)

1975: former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides HR Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2½ to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up (each ended up serving 1½ years).