50 years ago in Expo history: Spokane appealed to a visiting editor’s wife and future ambassador, who noted how ‘people are not mugged here’

Editor’s note: Since there was no leap day in 1974, today’s column includes material from March 1 of that year.

Robin Chandler Duke, a former New York Journal-American editor and wife of Angier Biddle Duke, paid a visit to the Expo ’74 site and pronounced herself “very impressed.”

She was also impressed with the city itself. She said there was “a sense of quiet, and people are not in such a terrible rush as they are in the East.”

“And what is even more important,” she said, “people are not mugged here, either.”

Duke was in Spokane to speak at the Celebrity Speakers Series at the Fox Theater. Her topic was “The Making of An American Image.”

She was well-known for her appearances on TV panels and her work in foreign affairs. She would later be named ambassador to Norway.

From 100 years ago: Spokane “was the center of a great wheat and agricultural district,” and the home of three large flour mills.

Those three mills employed about 400 workers. The mills had paid out $4.5 million to the region’s farmers for wheat used.

Flour and wheat exports were increasingly important – the U.S. had exported 60% more wheat and flour to China and Japan than it had exported the previous year.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1692: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba, a West Indian slave, are accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.

1940: Hattie McDaniel becomes the first Black woman to win an Oscar for “Gone with the Wind.”