Today -100: September 22, 1910: Of attempted assassinations, at home and abroad

Japan leaks the discovery of a socialist plot to assassinate Emperor Mutsuhito. The plotters will be sentenced to death by a special secret court. Supposedly, this is the only such plot in the last 2,500 years.

US ambassador to Turkey Oscar Straus has dropped plans to visit Russia, evidently because he was unwilling to accept the special passport necessary for him to visit St Petersburg because he is Jewish.

William Randolph Hearst responds to Mayor Gaynor’s accusations that attacks on him in Hearst’s papers resulted in his assassination. Hearst says the shooting must have affected Gaynor’s mind and regrets that “his experience did not abate his evil temper or his lying tongue.” Hearst goes on to make various insinuations about the corrupt forces allegedly behind the campaign to elect Gaynor governor. He ends politely, “I personally will not take advantage of your columns to criticize Mayor Gaynor politically, first because of his illness, and second, because his mental, as well as his moral condition, has eliminated him from political consideration.”