Today -100: December 10, 1911: Of radium, lily-white Harlem, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and beating deaf-mutes

Fad of the Day -100: “Radium Cure a Fad of Paris Society.” Just sit in a room whose air is infused with radium for a couple of hours while you play bridge or whatnot, and your rheumatism and heart ailments will be cured.

Some doctor in Paris has determined that if a fetus’s heartbeat is more than 150 beats per minute, it is a girl. Another French professor insists that this means that one can control the sex of one’s offspring. The father could take adrenalin to have a daughter. Yeah, I don’t know how he thinks that would work either.

Property-owners in yet another section of Harlem have joined together to pledge not to rent or sell to black people. It is expected that these organizations will spread and that Harlem will soon be entirely white. The NYT says the black population of NYC is 97,000. According to the 1910 census, the city’s total population was 4.7 million.

New York state Supreme Court Justice Leonard Giegerich approves a child custody agreement in which the ex-wife is allowed custody of the couple’s 3-year-old daughter so long as she doesn’t employ a negro maid.

Some time back, France ordered all religious orders dissolved. Most are now gone and their properties seized by the government, but the Little Sisters of the Poor, who escaped notice because they are little, I guess, are barricading themselves in their convents, because the Little Sisters of the Poor are also totally bad-ass, I guess. Catholic mobs are attacking the homes of people who buy the property formerly held by the orders (and in Lyons they attacked a Jewish synagogue, because why not?).

Headline of the Day -100: “Pennington Beats Deaf Mutes.”

In basketball.