Visitors from Afar
Thirty years ago this week, on June 23, 1988, the Washington State Convention Center opened in Seattle, although the city had been hosting a wide variety of groups and organizations for more than a century. In 1909 many groups traveled to Seattle en masse to hold their gatherings during the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, including trainloads of women who arrived that summer for a national suffrage convention. Meetings were often held at hotels and churches, but civic boosters realized that larger facilities were needed for future conferences and to house attendees.
The need became more urgent after the posh Lincoln Hotel burned down in 1920. Soon after, work began on the Olympic Hotel, which opened in 1924 and quickly became the premiere destination for world-traveling conventioneers. A few years later, Mayor Bertha Landes dedicated the new Civic Auditorium (now part of Marion Oliver McCaw Hall at the Seattle Center), which provided ample room for large meetings.
Over the years the city has hosted housing expositions, service organizations, labor conferences, political conventions, and more. Although new hotels and meeting places were being built for a growing numbers of guests, by the 1980s it became obvious that a large, dedicated center was needed to house the never-ending stream of conventions and trade shows.
Early in his first term, Governor John Spellman chose nine people -- led by James Ellis -- to plan out the new Washington State Convention Center and pick its site. Phyllis Lamphere -- a former Seattle city council member -- became a driving force behind its creation. By the time the center opened in 1988, it was already booked up for years in advance. Planning is currently underway to double its size, at a cost of more than $1.6 billion.
Visitors from Beyond?
On June 24, 1947, the modern phenomenon of unidentified flying objects was born near Mount Rainier, when pilot Kenneth Arnold espied nine shiny objects skimming the crest of the Cascades "like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water." News of Arnold's encounter made national headlines and soon everybody was seeing flying saucers.
Two weeks later, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published the first purported photo of a mystery disk, which was snapped as the object flew over Lake City. Then, on July 9, the U.S. Army issued and promptly retracted an announcement that it had recovered the wreckage of a crashed saucer near Roswell, New Mexico.
Amid mounting hysteria, two Tacoma log salvagers approached Amazing Stories magazine with their account of a "giant flying donut" that had supposedly exploded over Maury Island on June 21, 1947. They said they had slag-like fragments to prove it, but a mysterious "man in a black suit" had spoiled their photographs. The army dispatched two investigators, who died in a plane crash while returning to their base, thus planting the seeds for many conspiracy theories to come.
