Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Actress Hazel Kirke, the “dainty prima donna” star of “A Stubborn Cinderella,” took on a new role on the streets of downtown Spokane.

She became a newsie – newspaper street vendor – for an afternoon.

It was all for a good cause. She had “often expressed her desire to aid in some way the forest fire sufferers” of the Big Burn. So when someone suggested as a joke that she sell newspapers to earn money for the cause, she jumped at the idea.

So “the attractive actress” sold the “sporting extra” edition of the Spokane Daily Chronicle from the back of a large Chalmers-Detroit auto.

She was opening a two-night engagement at the Auditorium Theater in Spokane.

From the law school beat: A large enrollment was predicted for the Spokane Law School, which was connected to the now-defunct Spokane College.

It was the law school’s third year. It would soon be supplanted when Gonzaga University’s School of Law opened in 1912.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

2000: A jury in Coeur d’Alene awarded $6.3 million to a woman and her son who’d been attacked by Aryan Nations guards outside the white supremacist group’s North Idaho headquarters.