Today -100: December 16, 1909: Of Carrie Nation, divinity students, racist congressmen and Nicaraguan presidents all behaving badly. Also, cork legs.

Rep. Foster of Ill. introduced a bill for Civil War veterans who were honorably discharged (and presumably had had their leg or legs amputated) to be given new artificial cork legs every three years.

Carrie Nation visited the House and Senate buildings. Finding a House messenger smoking, she knocked the cigarette out of his mouth.

Divinity students at the McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago hanged and then burned the effigy of a professor of Hebrew in front of his residence. The students had failed to get the Faculty to drop Hebrew from the curriculum. What Would Ku Klux Klan Jesus Do?

Rep. J. Thomas Heflin of Alabama introduces a bill to segregate street cars in D.C. Heflin, the NYT reminds us, shot a black man (and, by ricochet, a white bystander) on a D.C. street car in 1908 for drinking whiskey in the presence of ladies (here’s the original story on that. Heflin said, “Under the circumstances there was nothing else for me to do.” Clearly.), and 21 months later still hasn’t been tried for it (he never will be, and Heflin, truly a vile piece of shit, would brag about the incident in later election campaigns) (he didn’t have to worry about the black vote in Alabama, having drafted the provision of the 1901 Alabama constitution that banned negroes from voting).

One Frederick Palmer has written an article about Zelaya in The Outlook which accuses him of having made a fortune off of state monopolies and that “Zelaya freely practices the droits de seigneur of the Dark Ages.”