From 1975: A 900-page draft environmental statement grappled with the question: What has been the impact of the “most colossal change of the environment man has ever engineered?”
The subject was the Columbia Basin Project, with the Grand Coulee Dam as its centerpiece.
The environmental statement had just been released, 40 years after the project got underway. The statement was mandated by the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, and took four years to assemble.
The conclusions?
Notable ones included the loss of fish spawning grounds, raising of the water table, a large increase in upland birds and waterfowl, and the displacement of native plant species.
The economic impact was also massive. The number of farms grew from 650 in 1949 to 2,600 in 1972. The population grew from 22,500 to 66,300.
The impacts were so pervasive, 900 pages might not have been enough to cover them all.
From 1925: Clyde Loomis, a former North Central High School student, was planning a spectacular stunt at lunch hour on the corner of Howard Street and Riverside Avenue.
Loomis, “disguised as ‘Prince Karnac,’ ” will “defy anyone to secure him by their own rope.” Then he will be “hung head downward from a scaffold and make his escape before his audience.”
This Houdini-like stunt was intended to publicize his appearance at the American Theater later in the week, as part of the American Legion Revue.
Young Loomis was “gaining national recognition as a modern mystic.” He had been on the vaudeville circuit with “his mental and crystal-gazing act.”