This day in history: The north-south freeway was in the works, but so were concerns about the cost

From 1975: The State Highways Department director wanted to discuss alternatives to the proposed $95 million North-South freeway.

“It’s too much money,” the director said. “We can’t afford it.”

He wanted to explore less-expensive options, such as a traffic couplet on Division Street and a new two-lane road in the Market-Havana corridor.

From 1925: A Spokane man survived a bitter cold snap in British Columbia by taking refuge in an unlikely spot: a boiler.

Jack Rickard was an engineer at the Crow’s Nest Oil Co. in the Sage Creek area. When the temperature dropped to 55 below, the “wind drew the fire out of the stove” at the company’s plant. He took refuge between the two boilers, which retained some warmth. But the boilers cooled, so he had to “crawl into the firebox” of one of the boilers.

A crew trudged through deep snow and bitter cold to rescue him. They opened the door of the firebox and found him “black with soot of the oil and too weak to help himself.”

He was taken by sled to the international border and then on to a Spokane for his recovery.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1847: Samuel Colt sells his first revolver pistol to the U.S. government.

1932: Indian independence leaders Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru are arrested.

1959: USSR’s Luna 1 becomes first spacecraft to escape Earth’s gravity.

1974: President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over tapes subpoenaed by Watergate Commission.