Today -100: December 26, 1912: Of assassination attempts, disputed mountains, night riders, and cannibals

In a possible assassination attempt, dynamite explodes in a news stand in Panama City fifteen minutes after President Taft passed by it.

At the Balkan War peace talks, everyone’s a little concerned by the fact that Austria hasn’t demobilized its army, presumably as a way of putting pressure on Serbia and Montenegro not to demand too much new territory. But the Montenegrin negotiator says that Montenegro would rather be exterminated than yield Mount Lowehen or Scutari. I’m sure it’s a very nice mountain.

As I mentioned on the 17th, there is a movement in northern Georgia to ethnically cleanse all negroes from the region, supposedly because of “numerous attacks on white women” (numerous seems to mean three; one of the alleged perpetrators was lynched, the rest executed). The anti-negro campaign began two months ago in Forsyth County and spread to a dozen other counties. The threats made by “night riders” against negroes have expanded: white planters who still employ negroes are being threatened with having their barns and homes burned.

Headline of the Day -100: “Cannibals Fed Him Well.” South American tribesmen who were so nice to a journalist/adventurer that he panicked, decided they must be fattening him up for the pot, and “escaped.”

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