50 years ago in Expo history: A new attraction planned had surprising roots, given the fair’s environmental theme

Expo ’74 announced that it had landed a big new exhibitor: The American Forest Institute.

This timber industry group planned to create a 5,000-squarefoot wood-beamed pavilion on Havermale Island, just west of Howard Street.

A timber industry pavilion might have struck some as out-of-step with Expo’s environmental theme. Yet the institute said it planned to make a “dramatic presentation on timber management and the uses of wood – one of the nation’s few renewable resources.” The goal was to “get the timber management story to the American people.”

From 100 years ago: Evangelist Gypsy Pat Smith addressed 11,000 people at the Spokane Armory on the first day of a three-week revival meeting.

Smith declared the afternoon crowd the largest that had ever greeted him on opening day, and the evening session was equally jammed.

“His talks were punctuated with references, both humorous and pathetic, to his early days in a Gypsy camp in Scotland,” the Chronicle wrote. “There was no forced emotional appeal and no fireworks. He talked freely of his conversion at the age of 16, before which time he had never been in church or Sunday school or had never heard the name of God or Jesus mentioned.”

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1953: U.S. President Harry Truman announces American development of the hydrogen bomb.

1999: President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial begins in the U.S. Senate after the House voted to impeach him for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky