100 YEARS AGO TODAY
February 14, 1913
An explosion which blew out every window on the third floor, shaking the three-story Rhein hotel to its foundations, starting a fire which dangerously burned two men and sent lodgers rushing pell-mell to the street, was caused at 7 o’clock this morning by a lodger’s attempt to commit suicide. George Bieler, age 23, a laborer, the would-be suicide, is at St. Joseph’s hospital with his entire body a mass of burns. He is unconscious and is not expected to recover. Bieler had unscrewed the gas pipe connected with a small heater in his room and crawled into bed to await the end..
50 YEARS AGO TODAY
February 14, 1963
Something has to be done to provide money for schools which would be affected by the governor’s proposal to count federal impact money as local funds, Sen. Frank Foley, Vancouver Democrat, who heads the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said today. “A concerted effort is going to be made in the Senate for the federally impacted schools to relieve that particular problem, at least to a degree,” Foley said. .
25 YEARS AGO TODAY
February 14, 1988
When Gerald Phillips leased and then sold his $135,000 Gig Harbor home to a Federal Way man last year, he assumed the yellow, two-story house ensconced by trees in Gig Harbor would be the man’s home. Instead, law-enforcement authorities said, the house became home to a sophisticated suburban marijuana factory. Dozens of marijuana plants – from seedlings to tall, harvestable bushes – were bathed by a large electrical system. Meanwhile, an automatic watering system coiled through the house, while heat and humidity were vented through an elaborate, 13-vent exhaust system that wove its way through holes in the building’s floors, walls and ceilings.
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