Today -100: January 7, 1926: Of worlds court, state of the state messages, marching on Budapest, and B & A

The move to join the World Court progresses as the Senate, by a vote of 54-16, rejects James Reed (D-Missouri)’s resolution calling for investigation of pro-World Court propaganda and propaganda from international bankers to influence Congress in favor of war debt settlements with European countries.

New York Gov. Al Smith presents his program to the Legislature, including: extending the gubernatorial term to 4 years; biennial legislative sessions with state senators serving 4-year terms & assemblycritters 2; an executive (i.e., unified) budget rather than each department’s budget being voted on separately; consolidation of counties, including within New York City; abolishing the Motion Picture Censorship Commission (he calls film censorship a useless activity opposed to freedom & liberty); abolishing the state census; max. 48 hours work for women and minors.

Gyula Gömbös, head of the Hungarian National Independence Party (which the NYT calls Fascisti), is said to be gathering forces to march on Budapest in 2 or 3 days.

George Burns & Gracie Allen marry. Have you seen the short films they made together c.1930? You should.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 6, 1926: Of killer cops, cells, crowns prince, and sensational trashy periodical literature

Samuel Kranin, a Brooklyn glazier, goes to the police station to report that a patrolman beat him up in his store after he refused his demand for $2. After he picks the cop, John J. Brennan, out of a lineup, Brennan shoots him dead. The police surgeon says Brennan is drunk.

Hungarian authorities make many arrests in a conspiracy of fascist types, anti-Semites & royalists, including the chief of state police and Prince Ludwig Windish-Graetz, to counterfeit French francs to use to create a dictatorship and make Prince Albrecht king, displacing “Regent” Miklós Horthy. The Princess Windish-Graetz is assured by the head jailer that her husband is occupying “the best cell in the building.” Most of the police work in uncovering this plot was done by the French.

Romanian Crown Prince Carol drops the “crown prince” business and is now calling himself Scarlat Mondstireanu, which is just a fun name. The royal family will pay his past debts but not support him financially in the future.

Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler gives his annual speech to the students, denouncing “sensational trashy periodical literature,” which cultivated types of people should ignore because life is just too short. He doesn’t seem to specify what literary elements make for such garbage lit, but we do know that in 1941 he will personally block Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls from winning the Pulitzer,  calling it “offensive and lascivious.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 5, 1926: Worthless parliamentarians are the worst kind of parliamentarians.

William Hale and Ernest Burkhart are arrested in Oklahoma for their role in a plot that murdered Osage Indians to steal their oil money. Hale & Burkhart are played by, respectively, Robert de Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos declares the Greek constitution null and void, saying “the whole nation is tired of worthless parliamentarians.”

The New Haven, Connecticut Klan disbands after finding itself at odds with the national Klan, which New Haven secretary Arthur Mann calls the “greatest organization of graft known,” which signs up “riffraff,” anarchists and radicals for the $10 membership fee.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 4, 1926: Parliamentary government is the cause of all our troubles

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos, prime minister of Greece since June, declares himself dictator at a banquet of the Democratic guard, which is just sarcastic if you ask me. “Parliamentary government is the cause of all our troubles,” he declares.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 3, 1926: I am glad the family kicked him out

Trotsky is elected to the Politburo. Stalin is re-elected as party general secretary.

A Pittsburgh Common Pleas Court judge rejects North Carolina’s request for the extradition of a black man on liquor charges after the judge is informed that he was indicted by a grand jury from which black people are excluded.

While some Romanians now think that Crown Prince Carol was forced to abdicate after participating in a plot to overthrow his father, King Ferdinand, he announces that he will divorce Princess Helen, which will be complicated because the marriage was Greek Orthodox. Carol is expected to look for a job in aviation. He’s been holed up in a hotel in Milan in which a Romanian woman is also staying, but is it his former wife or is it his mistress? Who can say. His brother Nicholas, who’s been living in Paris and is perhaps miffed that the belief there that he was the heir to the Romanian throne, which he did not contradict, has been refuted, says “Carol has done an unforgivable thing, and I am glad the family kicked him out.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 2, 1926: How much intelligence is the world prepared for?

Romanians are perplexed at Crown Prince Carol’s abdication. Some think it’s a woman thing, although they incorrectly assume the woman is the wife his family forced him to put aside, others think it’s about a scandal when he was chief of military aviation and it purchased some decrepit planes from France. His abdication letter says he won’t return to Romania for 6 years and after that only with the permission of the king and Parliament. 

Professor McDuff of Armstrong College, Durham University warns the Eugenics Educational Society that the white-collar labor market would become congested if the average intelligence were increased. “The world is not organized or prepared for a much higher level of intelligence than it already has.”

Only one person is killed trying to watch the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadina, falling off the top of a building, but a grand stand collapses, injuring 235. Another woman dies of a cerebral hemorrhage watching the collapse.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 1, 1926: Profane parasitical constructions are the worst kind of constructions

Romanian Crown Prince Carol, who left the country to attend Queen Alexandra’s funeral in November and never came back, renounces his right to succeed to the throne, all his other royal rights, and his membership in the royal family. His father accepts super-fast. This has something to do with the married prince’s affair with the divorcee he later married, Magda Lupescu (this is not widely known yet). Carol married someone else in 1918 but the royal family annulled it. His 4-year-old son Michael will be the new heir to the throne.

The NAACP says there were 18 lynchings in the US in 1925. Mississippi had 6, Florida 3, Georgia 2, with 1 each in Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Virginia, and Utah. 2 were burned to death. The article does not give a racial breakdown, though I’ll bet the NAACP did.

Mussolini wants to make Rome great again: “Rome must again become the wonder of the whole world.” He plans to demolish the houses (“parasitical constructions”) and “the contamination of tramways” around the Pantheon and other ancient sites, including Christian temples, to create large squares around them, create wide boulevards á la Haussmann, and do it all within five years.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: December 31, 1925: Of pensions, fevers, longevity, and inventions

John Hylan resigns as New York City mayor one day before his term expires, which for some convoluted reason is the only way he gets a pension ($4,205 a year). Outgoing Police Commissioner Richard Enright does the same ($5,000). Temps will fill in for 24 hours.

Commerce Sec Herbert Hoover warns against the “fever of speculation” in stocks and real estate. Well I’m sure he’ll fix all that. He’s also against buying by instalment plan.

Dr. Hornell Hart of Bryn Mawr College tells an American Sociological Society meeting that by the year 2000 humans will live to 100 on average and some to 200. Hart lived to 78.

Nils Aasen, Norwegian inventor of both the hand grenade and the anti-personnel mine, dies at 47 of tuberculosis brought on by a nervous breakdown. He was having trouble trying to invent an insomnia mask.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: December 30, 1925: But I was opposed to blood-letting

The British are so excited that Princess Astrid of Sweden – “according to an unnamed Swedish diplomat, she is one of the prettiest girls in Europe” (and what better judges of feminine pulchritude can there be than unnamed Swedish diplomats, I ask you) – will be visiting Buckingham Palace, so they’ve decided she’ll probably marry Prince Edward. She won’t. She’s 20, he’s 31.

Headline of the Day -100:

No one’s heard from Leon Trotsky in a while, but at the Communist Congress when Zinoviev reminds everyone that last year Trotsky was accused of semi-Menshevism – semi-Menshevism! – he pipes up “Correct!”. Stalin notes that he had opposed the demand by the Leningrad Committee, led by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who are now at odds with Stalin, for Trotsky to be removed from the Politburo and the Communist Party: “They demanded blood, but I was opposed to blood-letting, thinking, before long what would be left of the party.” What indeed.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: December 29, 1925: Murderous delirium is the worst kind of delirium

With the Radical members of the French Cabinet rebelling against PM Aristide Briand’s financial proposals, Briand threatens to throw them out of the Cabinet and form a new one in alliance with the Right Center.

Mexico bans marijuana which, we are informed, produces “murderous delirium. Its addicts often become insane.”

The District of Columbia bans horses on four major streets.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: December 28, 1925: You’ve got to have a sense of humor if you’re going to live in that town, Philadelphia, anyway

Smedley Darlington Butler, former Philadelphia police chief, gives a blistering speech to the Adult Bible Classes Federation of Pennsylvania, calling Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick a “disloyal chief” who fired him because he insisted on going after big people as well as “little dummies” for Prohibition violations (you could be forgiven for reading his remarks about crime and thinking that Prohibition was the only law on the books). He says of Kendrick’s claim that he fired him because he didn’t give him proper respect: “No, I didn’t. I should have pulled his noise.” He says the fundamental issue today is “whether we Americans are to be governed by a lot of bootleggers and naturalized foreigners.” He bitches that the people of Philly (Pheople?) didn’t support him and are “getting about what they deserve.”

In the audience is Gov. Gifford Pinchot, who is said to want Butler to succeed him as governor, a plan Butler explicitly disclaims. Pinchot says Butler showed that a Man could enforce the law “even in Philadelphia.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: December 27, 1925: Turkish delight

The new Turkish Civil Code ends the right of husbands to unilaterally divorce their wives. Divorce will now be granted only by courts and only for cause – insanity, desertion, infidelity etc. This will not be applied retroactively to annul, say, the divorce that Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk decreed for himself in August.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.