The Tidbit from a week ago covered the itinerary and game during the Minnesota Gophers' trip to play Washington in Seattle in 1941. Last week’s story mentioned that Minnesota made the same trip in 1936 but said nothing about those events. However, an alert reader, Phil Allen, recalled that the Minnesota team experienced a fire at their hotel during one of the trips to Seattle, so I looked into the claim and found it was true.
A side note about hotel fires. Apparently they were very common in the first half of the 20th century. To the point where hotels advertised that they were “fireproof”. Searching newspapers.com for “fireproof hotel” has hits peaking in the 1920-1940 range. Here’s a photo, taken in the 1960s, of an old hotel in San Diego with “Fireproof Hotel” painted on the outside: https://ebydurbin.net/sandiego60s/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Slides_02_064-scaled.jpg
A side note about hotel fires. Apparently they were very common in the first half of the 20th century. To the point where hotels advertised that they were “fireproof”. Searching newspapers.com for “fireproof hotel” has hits peaking in the 1920-1940 range. Here’s a photo, taken in the 1960s, of an old hotel in San Diego with “Fireproof Hotel” painted on the outside: https://ebydurbin.net/sandiego60s/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Slides_02_064-scaled.jpg
I searched for hotel fires generally and found that a frequent cause was people drinking too much and falling asleep in bed while smoking.