Today -100: April 24, 1912: Of presidents fighting back, Moroccans fighting telegraph operators, and binoculars

This must be at least the third time I’ve seen a story along these lines: the Cabinet urges Taft to fight back against Roosevelt. Among other things, they want him to release some of TR’s correspondence. Taft is about to make some campaign speeches in Massachusetts (which will have its first ever primaries this year) and this is actually something new: it’s unprecedented for a sitting president to campaign openly for re-election.

Taft wins the New Hampshire primary. This is the first presidential primary ever held in New Hampshire and indeed in New England.

Moroccans are evidently not so happy with their new “protectorate” and attacked and killed a bunch of French soldiers in Fez. There have been stories running for days about the four brave French telegraph operators who held off their attackers for hours before being killed (it’s all very Rudyard Kipling but, you know, French). The Jewish quarter of Fez was set on fire, as is traditional.

More bodies are recovered from the wreck of the Titanic.

The Titanic’s lookout tells the Senate’s Titanic hearings that the ship might have been saved if he had been given some binoculars.