This day in history: 5 injured when car fell 35 feet from bridge in Spirit Lake; new Spokane recycling center gave kids new opportunity

From 1975: Reynolds Aluminum opened a recycling center in Spokane, creating a moneymaking opportunity for kids scouring the roadsides and medians.

The center would pay 15 cents a pound for aluminum beverage cans and other household scrap, including “TV dinner trays, pie pans, aluminum foil and aluminum lawn furniture.”

This also created an opportunity for fundraising groups who wanted to sponsor aluminum drives. The recycling center was at 2515 E. Trent.

From 1925: Two people were barely clinging to life and three others injured when “a big Nash sedan leaped 35 feet from the Bordentown Bridge a mile south of Spirit Lake, Idaho.

The bridge crossed the railroad tracks at that point, “and the car landed upside down and was completely demolished.”

One of the passengers managed to extricate himself from the wreck and walked to Spirit Lake to call for help.

“He returned with help and lifted the car, which had pinned some of the others to the railroad track.”

The doctor who treated the injured occupants said “it was nothing less than a miracle that all of the occupants were not killed.”

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1858: Creator of the diesel engine Rudolf Diesel is born in Paris.

1965: Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov leaves his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes and becomes the first person to conduct a spacewalk.

1990: In the largest art heist in U.S. history, 13 works of art worth over $500 million are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.