Today -100: January 5, 1911: Of large dirigibles, earthquakes, anarchist demonstrations, and college women

A dirigible capable of carrying 50 passengers is supposedly being built. Its designer promises it will neither explode nor fall.

An earthquake in Russia, 7.7 on the Richter scale, destroys Vyerny, the capital of Semiryetchensk.

Chicago bans anarchists holding a demonstration in honor of the Sidney Street burglars.

The endless discussion in the NYT letters pages about the women’s suffrage movement in colleges continues with a letter from “E.K.R.”, whose daughter is a student in a “prominent college.” She informs him that “without doubt most girls comes out of college suffragettes. ... I have three other daughters, and I am quite sure that no other girl of mine shall go to college to have this stuff ground into her head. It seems to me too bad that our girls should have their poor little heads filled up with this nonsense, thereby constantly increasing the already large army of spinster ladies in the United States of America; for what young man, except one of those long-haired poltroons, would marry a girl who is both a college graduate and a suffragette?”