100 years ago today - Feb 6, 1922

B. H. Roberts, assisted by Second Counselor Anthony Ivins, and Apostles John A. Widtsoe and James E. Talmage, writes an optimistic response to William E. Riter, a Mormon who had passed on five questions of an investigator "Mr. Couch [Later determined to be chemist James Fitton Couch of the USDA] of Washington" concerning the Book of Mormon. The questions are of a scientific nature, rather than scriptural. Roberts does not respond to Couch's question about the lack of fossil evidence for such Book of Mormon animals as the horse. Riter's letter led to Robert's study of "Book of Mormon difficulties," the most in-depth, in-house, critical examination of Mormon scripture by an LDS general authority ever undertaken. Roberts's answers to Couch's questions are folleowd by another question from Riter: "Why can not the Negro hold the Priesthood?"