Today -100: December 23, 1909: Of assassinations, ringleaders, dog whips, and bulls at the Waldorf-Astoria

Zelaya issues a statement blaming his having to resign entirely on the United States. Just as his forces were, he claims, about to defeat the rebels, the US severed relations and threatened to send in the Marines under the pretext of the executions of Cannon and Groce, which he compares to the blowing up of the Maine, for which there was no proof of Spanish culpability.

The NYT wrongly reports Korean Prime Minister Yi Wan Yong was assassinated, stabbed to death. Stabbed yes, died no.

Actually assassinated: Col. Karpoff, head of the secret police in St. Petersburg, lured to a building and killed by a bomb (there’s a long story in the 1/16/10 magazine section, with engravings of the bombing and everything), and Arthur Mason Tippetts Jackson, Chief Magistrate of Nasik in the Presidency of Bombay, shot by a member of a secret society while attending the theatre.

Two days ago, we heard of a little racial dispute in Magnolia, Alabama. Today, the authorities claim to have quelled a plan by negroes to attack whites, which they thwarted by arresting 42 “ringleaders.”

NY Governor Charles Evan Hughes met a delegation from several suffragist groups and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, all calling for a referendum on women’s suffrage in the state. Hughes responded, “so far as my personal views upon this question are concerned I have nothing to say at this time.”

From the London Times: Theresa Garnett, a suffragette who struck the president of the Board of Trade, Winston Churchill, with a dog whip at the train station in Bristol in November, is out of prison (the charge was only disorderly conduct rather than assault, so that Churchill didn’t have to testify; she hunger struck in prison and was forcibly fed; she also set fire to her cell). Garnett wants her whip back. It now has historical significance, she says.

“A bull calf late yesterday afternoon suddenly appeared in the throng on the sidewalk just outside the Waldorf-Astoria, at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-third Street, and, more frightened than savage, endeavored to gain admittance to the hotel by climbing over the iron railings on the Fifth Avenue side.” The calf “came at a gallop down Thirty-third Street from Madison Avenue, scampered among the automobiles on the avenue, and bumped unceremoniously into Patrolman Nittel, who was directing the traffic. Before Nittel could recover his equilibrium – the bump was a rear attack and most unexpected – the young bull was headed in the direction of the hotel. ... The bull’s path was cleared as if by magic as he bounded across the sidewalk toward the iron railing. ... Everywhere were seen fluttering veils as women rushed for shelter. ... ‘Get a rope!’ shouted a man who was prepared to climb the electric light post should the emergency arise.” Patrolman Trainor, on his horse, lassoed the bull, which was then led, I regret to say, back towards the abattoir at First Ave & 45th from which he’d escaped.