Montana Album: Search on for missing Glasgow residents
50 Years Ago
From the Tribune week of Mar. 29, 1965
About 40 aircraft, including 30 from Montana and others from North Dakota, Canada and Glasgow Air Force Base, found no trace Tuesday of a trio of Glasgow residents missing since Sunday night. Their plane left Havre en route to Glasgow at 8 p.m. The pilot was Art Kotaki, Glasgow restaurant operator, and passengers were Russell E. St. Clair and his son, Ralph, 16. “It sure doesn’t look good,” said Charles A. Lynch, director of the Montana Aeronautics Commission. He said the area covered extends from Havre to the North Dakota border and from Canada to the Missouri River. “We’ve told our searchers to look for any break in the deep snow or any debris,” Lynch said. Some snow banks north of Glasgow are as high as the eaves on houses.
HOUSTON – Big league baseball goes indoors next Friday at the domed stadium here, and chances are the Houston Astro-New York Yankee exhibition game will be the least of the attractions of the day. The game inaugurates the $31.6 million Harris County Stadium, a sports palace of steel and plastic and multi-hued upholstered seats and pampered grass that sprawls over nearly 10 acres of land in Houston. And many eyes will be drawn to the scoreboard, a $2 million maze of electrical connections and lights that covers an area of stadium wall about the size of a football field. Not a few people will be distracted by activities of the fan-elite, the handful of fans who have shelled out up to $18,000 for the luxurious “skybox” private club-type seats in one level of the stadium.
Ronald Mundt, a freshman at Belt High School, was judged champion cook for his Hungarian goulash in the Cascade County beef cook-off Saturday afternoon in the Hospitality Room of the Great Falls Gas Co. State finals will be in August under the auspices of the Cascade County CowBelles. Maxine, Otis, gas company home service advisor, and Maxine Moline, home demonstration agent, judged the entries from Great Falls, Centerville and Belt.
SAIGON – A huge bomb exploded at the United States Embassy in Saigon Tuesday, causing scores of casualties among Americans and Vietnamese and making a battle-like scene in the street. At least one American secretary was killed instantly, and another may have died of wounds. The blast heavily damaged the office of Ambassador Maxwell D. Taylor, who is in Washington reporting to President Johnson on the intensifying U.S. military effort against the Viet Cong and the retaliatory air strikes against Communist North Viet Nam.
Anne Culkin, author of the newspaper column “Talk It Over” and a book, “Charm for Young Women,” will present her course in personality development in a series of nine special classes Monday through Thursday at the College of Great Falls. She will also present a lecture, “Personality and Charm,” in the college theater Wednesday evening at 8:15; it is open to the public. Her course covers physical health and outward appearance, gaining confidence, and leadership and social graces.
WASHINGTON – The administrator of the tobacco industry’s voluntary advertising code told Congress Tuesday that he may forbid cigarette plugs on “family type” television shows. Health claims and endorsements by athletes already have been filtered out of such advertising, he said. The industry opposes these proposals.
WASHINGTON – A “frivolous little hat” that tried to go to the White House once before finally made it Tuesday night, thanks to the lady mayor of Great Falls, Mont. Mrs. Marian Erdmann said she wore the hat to a White House dinner to keep a promise to another lady who bought it for a White House visit which never came off. The mayor described it as a “cute little hat” and a “really frivolous, wispy little thing with an enormous turquoise rose on top.” It was borrowed from Mrs. Robert Warden, wife of the executive editor of the Great Falls Tribune, who was unable to make an earlier scheduled trip to the White House.
The political face of Africa has rapidly and radically changed since World War II. Once almost completely a colonial continent, today’s Africa contains only 13 territories held by European nations. From former colonies of Great Britain, France and Belgium, 25 free nations have been created in the past five years alone. The biggest bloc in the United Nations is the 34-nation Organization of African States. The once Dark Continent is tremendously rich in natural resources.
Ice jams and heavy runoff from melting snow have sent Montana streams on their spring rampage, and a U.S. Weather Bureau official called it only the beginning. Ice breaking up in the Smith River caused an ice jam in the vicinity of Smith River Hall Friday morning resulting in the river overflowing its banks upstream from the hall. About 20 ranchers live in the vicinity, and some began moving cattle from low lands until the river flowed around the ice jam. Flooding was also reported at Raynesford.
DAWSON CREEK, B.C. – Farmers near here said Thursday they thought a meteor-like object which streaked across the Northwest sky Wednesday night have landed within a 20-mile radius of the Alberta-British Columbia border. Royal Canadian Mounted Police went into the area 400 miles north of Edmonton after a number of persons reported sighting the fiery object. They were hampered in searching for the object by an overnight snowfall. Meteorologists said the reports indicated the meteor was “of great size and at a terrific height.” The “explosion” could have occurred when the meteor entered a less rarefied lower atmosphere and did not necessarily indicate it had struck the ground.
Lawrence G. Poitra, 28, 912 7th Ave. N., married and the father of five children, was killed in a one-car accident at 4:25 p.m. Saturday about four miles west of Vaughn on U.S. 89-Route 20. Investigating highway patrolmen said no reason for the accident could be ascertained, since the car seemed to “just drive off the road.” The westbound vehicle went off the highway, hit a ditch, flew through the air, struck a telephone pole guy wire and smashed broadside into a huge tree. Poitra reportedly was en route to Seattle and had a large amount of children’s clothing in his car. The patrolman estimated the car had been traveling at abut 60 mph.
NEW ORLEANS – Researchers probed the mysteries Wednesday of what may be one of the most fantastic and weird drugs of all time. It passes right through your skin, enhances the action of other drugs, kills pain, relieves inflammation, stops the growth of some bacteria, tranquilizes, acts as a diuretic and heavens knows what else. It’s called DMSO — short for dimethyl sulfoxide — a potent solvent which has wide industrial uses and will dissolve your clothes if they are made of synthetic fibers like rayon and acrylics.
100 Years Ago
From the Tribune week of Mar. 29, 1915
HELENA – Hotelkeepers in Montana who place guests in rooms or beds that are infested with bed bugs are liable to criminal prosecution under regulations that have been adopted by the state board of health. Besides banning the bugs, the board provides that all beds, bunks or cots must be equipped with clean cotton or linen pillow slips and sheets and that the sheets must be not less than 96 inches in length after being laundered. Individual cloth or paper towels must be supplied to guests dry and cuspidors must be cleaned daily.
LONDON – We are fighting Germany, Austria and drink, and so far as I can see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is drink,” said David Lloyd-George, chancellor of the exchequer, replying today to a deputation of the ship-building employers federation, the members of which were unanimous in urging that in order to meet the national requirement at the present time, there should be total prohibition during the period of the war of the sale of intoxicating liquors.
Again smoke is to issue from the big stack. An order has been made by those in authority to immediately start smelting operations at the Boston & Montana smelter. Before the day closed, a number of men were added to the working forces. By April 1 there will be a still further increased army employed by the B.&M. smelter, and in anther week, the working corps should number within a very few of the total on the payroll when the big institution shut down last August. The order was made by manager James O’Grady at 10 o’clock yesterday to announce the news to to available former employees and advise them to shine up the dinner bucket and be prepared to get into harness.
HONOLULU – Repeated tests were made today of the diving tube constructed by engineers for the purpose of facilitating the work of raising the submarine F-4 which has been lying since a week ago today on the bottom of the ocean just outside the harbor here. Two divers experimented with the apparatus in the harbor, going down to considerable depths. It is understood that the tube proved satisfactory, and it is expected that the divers will use it tomorrow at the spot located.
Seventy-eight little tots, boys and girls of the St. Thomas Orphans’ home were shorn of their surplus hair last evening by a party of hair trimmers from the local barber shops. The party, consisting of 20, went out to the home last evening after the closing of their respective places of business, and, as has been their custom for several years, furnished their services gratuitously in dressing up the hair of the children.
SAN FRANCISCO – Montana’s handsome structure on the shore of the Golden Gate was dedicated with great ceremony at the Panama Pacific International exposition today. There were addresses, songs and apples. A bronze plaque commemorative of the exposition’s appreciation was tendered by Vice President M.H. DeYoung. The structure which Montana opens today is her home and hearthstone at the exposition during the life of the great world’s show. It is an imposing structure built of plaster and frame of green trimmings, with an application of the Pompeiian red to its external walls which Jules Guerin, the color expert of the exposition, has utilized in the exhibit palaces with famous effect.
Mr. and Mrs. Paul Rohne were driving home at 8:30 last evening to the city pumping plant southeast of town, where Mr. Rohne is chief engineer. They were on south Second street near Fourth avenue when an automobile speeded up behind them without a signal of warning, Mr. Rohne said, and crashed into the back of their buggy. Mr. Rohne was thrown to the muddy street on one side, and Mrs. Rohne was hurled the other way. She was bruised and suffered so severe a nervous shock that she was taken to Columbus hospital where her physician says she will spend several days. The buggy was wrecked. It was trailed down the street by the horse which bolted and ran for home.
LOS ANGELES – Typhus and smallpox epidemics are sweeping Mexico City, according to a special dispatch which the Los Angeles Times published today. The dispatch was sent from El Paso by a staff correspondent who said he was forced to leave Mexico City in order to bring out the truth regarding an appalling situation there. When he left 10 days ago, rat flesh, he declared, had become an ordinary article of diet among the masses of the people. Horses, dogs and cats that fell dying of starvation in the streets were pounced upon by ravenous human beings. The corespondent added that before General Obregon evacuated the capital on March 10, Carranza officials had deliberately set out making Mexico City a sepulcher. Pestilence was intentionally spread, he declared, and evidence of this, it is averred, has been on file some time in the U.S. state department.
Jesse Howe, or George Pressly Houk, lies dead at the city morgue, and an Austrian, who gives the name of Eli Zko, is accused by the police of his murder. Howe was found dying in the doorway of the Semaphore cigar store and barber shop on Second street south, just before last midnight, by pedestrians, his throat cut through all the vital arteries from the larynx to the extreme back of the neck. Howe was employed as a brakeman by the Great Northern railway and is said to be single. Howe’s murder appears to have been the result of a desperate quarrel in which it is said 10 persons participated.
LONDON – The death of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, first Baron Rothschild, head of the British branch of the great banking firm, occurred at his London residence at 4:30 o’clock in the afternoon. Lord Rothschild underwent an operation for the removal of the prostate gland on Saturday, the first intimation of this being contained in a bulletin sent to the London papers late Saturday night in which it was said that he was progressing satisfactorily. In Jewish circles, the death of Baron Rothschild creates a vacancy which there is none to fill. With his other manifold duties, he devoted a great amount of time and money to his poorer co-religionists.
There were 6,070 immigrant aliens who settled in Montana during the year of 1914, according to the annual report of the commissioner general of immigration. Of those who came to Montana from other countries, the English show the largest number with a total of 1,063. The Scandinavians come second with 876, and the Germans are third with 736. Other immigrants came from Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria, Servia and Montenegro, Scotland and Holland.
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