50 years ago in Expo history: A Liar’s Contest, yodeling and Icelandic Sweet Soup

The gloriously named oompah outfit, Erwin’s Alpine Band With Gretl and the Bavarian Schuhplattlers, were performing throughout the Expo ’74 fairgrounds over the next few days.

Yodeling, apparently, would be committed.

This was just one of the international touches that put the “world” in World’s Fair. More could be found in the Folklife Festival section of the fair, where Laura Brandson, an Icelandic cook from Vancouver, British Columbia, was serving up Icelandic Sweet Soup.

The Folklife Festival was also making plans for an epic Liar’s Contest, in which contestants would “try to outdo each other with tall tales.”

Utah Philips was planning to participate to “insure the integrity of the contest.”

In other Expo news, a letter-to-the-editor writer complained that the nightly Expo fireworks display was entirely out of place in a fair that was supposed to be celebrating a clean, fresh environment.

The smoke “dirtied the air” and explosions contributed to noise pollution. The letter writer proposed that the money wasted on fireworks should be used to plant more trees or clean up the city.

From 100 years ago: A group of prominent Hillyard businesspeople, fed up with the town’s political chaos, circulated a petition to put annexation to Spokane on the ballot once again. A previous effort failed narrowly, but the backers said the current political situation constituted an “emergency,” and a special election was urgent.

They called it a “hot and fast” campaign. A group of opponents had already held a mass meeting in protest.