Today -100: July 29, 1912: Of race riots and explorers

Race riot (or race war, according to the LA Times) in Plainville, Georgia. Evidently last week a white boy was hit with a stone, which naturally led to violence yesterday. All the negroes were driven out of the town (which is majority-black), and the sheriff was sent for. His posse was ambushed and the sheriff shot. Developing.

President Taft is such a bystander in his own re-election campaign that I hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t, until now, made any response to Roosevelt’s claim that the Republican convention was stolen. Well, now, rather belatedly, he has. It’s not very interesting.

Explorer Capt. Ejnar Mikkelsen and his engineer have returned from three years in the Arctic (Greenland), most of that time waiting for someone to rescue them (a Norwegian fishing, or possibly whaling, ship, in fact). His message: the Arctic really really sucks.