Today -100: February 8, 1911: Of planes, sallies, recalls, and the elixir of life

The new Army appropriation bill includes $25,000 to purchase airplanes to patrol the Tex-Mex border to insure against violations of the neutrality laws by either side in the Revolution.

Americans (and Mexican nationals)(and American soldiers) gathered outside El Paso to observe a minor battle in the Mexican Revolution from the safe side of the Rio Grande. After the fight, in which the insurrectos under Pascual Orozco beat the federales into a retreat (there seem to have been no casualties), rebels posed for pictures.

The NYT notes that the rebels have no female camp followers but the federal troops do, because the Mexican Army has no organized commissary system. Rather, it gives a small sum to each soldier, who hands it over to a woman who forages and cooks for him, occasionally gets accidentally killed in battle, and strips the bodies of the dead. (However the NYT headline “Orozco Beats Back Sally From Juarez” does not refer to one of those camp followers.)

Seattle Mayor Hiram Gill loses the recall election, which is I believe the first recall of a mayor. The NYT attributes the result to women voters, for no good reason that I can see, although it is the case women did not yet have the franchise in Washington when Gill was elected last March. The first woman ever to vote in the state of Washington was a Mrs. Rebecca Hall, aged 80.

A French veterinarian claims to have discovered the secret of rejuvenation, the elixir of life, at least in the horses he’s experimented on: injections of radium.