50 years ago in Expo history: Fair-goers struggle to locate restrooms around event

The No. 1 question at the Expo ’74 information booths: “Where are the restrooms?”

There were seven pairs of restrooms, but people still had trouble finding them, and some complained that “most of them are of the pay variety.”

“The booth attendants in their green and white uniforms make a great effort to give accurate information and to be pleasant to even the most unfriendly or weird visitors,” the Spokane Chronicle wrote. “… Most of the fair visitors who come to the information booth are complimentary about Expo and Spokane.”

The attendants tried to give most visitors verbal answers, in an effort to cut down on paper and litterbugs. But they did give out pocket-sized maps to those who needed them.

From 100 years ago: A young Spokane theater usher came into a $50,000 windfall, thanks to a “rich uncle.”

Helen Barnett was granted a fifth of his $250,000 estate.

“My goodness, I’m all surprised,” she said.

“The first thing she will do is buy a pair of silk stockings, she declared today,” said the Spokane Daily Chronicle.

She said she didn’t know her relatives had “50 cents, much less $250,000.”

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1776: Colonel John Nixon gives the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence to an assemblage of citizens in Philadelphia.