This day in history: Where there’s smoke, there used to also be legislators

From 1975: Smoking bans were sweeping the country, and the anti-smoking wave now arrived at the Washington State Capitol.

The Washington State Legislature was considering a smoking ban – meaning, a ban on smoking at the state legislature.

The anti-smoking faction won a partial victory, banning cigarettes, pipes and cigars at “any public meeting of any House committee.”

The victory was only partial, because a Spokane legislator, James Kuehnle, amended the rule to stipulate that the chairman of any House committee could “waive the no-smoking edict.”

With that proviso, the smoking “prohibition” passed by an 85 to 11 vote.

From 1925: The long saga of Nell Shipman’s movie company seemed to have come to an end – not a happy one.

“The company’s busted,” said a former member of the movie company. “Miss Shipman has gone to Hollywood looking for a job; two of the other players are at a logging camp in the Priest Lake region; I do not know the whereabouts of (former manager) Bert Van Tuyl.”

A few years earlier, Shipman’s movie company raised hopes that Spokane would become Hollywood North. She established a movie studio at Minnehaha Park in Spokane, complete with a “zoo” to house the animals used in her adventure movies.

Later, she moved the studio to the shores of Priest Lake, intending to make wilderness films, for which she was already famous.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1933: German Parliament dissolved by President Paul von Hindenburg by request of new chancellor Adolf Hitler.