100 years ago: Wilbur Wright, inventor of airplane, spends Thanksgiving in Tonganoxie

From the Lawrence Daily World for Nov. 26, 1910:

  • “Wilbur Wright, famous inventor of the aeroplane, spent Thanksgiving near Lawrence. Reuchlin Wright of Tonganoxie is a brother of the noted aviator, and when the latter came to Kansas City to attend the funeral of Ralph Johnstone who was killed in an aeroplane accident at Denver, he was brought out to Tonganoxie to spend the holiday. The Wright Brothers are just finishing a large factory for constructing airships in the corporate limits of Dayton. They have so many orders for airships that they cannot fill them.”
  • “Charles Smith, a laborer at the Bonner Springs cement plant, lost his life last night as a result of a Thanksgiving spree. Smith was ejected from his boarding house for creating a disturbance. Wandering down to the river, he cut loose a sand barge and set adrift. The barge drifted into a sand bar where it ran aground marooning Smith. After vain efforts to dislodge the raft, he removed his clothes and attempted to wade back to the bank. He was swept off his feet and in his drunken condition was drowned.”
  • “When the bitterly cold winter days arrive this year, inmates of the new county home will have cheerful gas grates to sit comfortably before. The county commissioners have decided to install gas in the new home now in process of creation. The old poorhouse now in use has never burned gas.”