Today -100: January 19, 1914: Of assassins, sneezes, and funny money

In Paris a few days ago there was an assassination attempt on Mehmed Cherif Pasha, a former Turkish ambassador to Sweden who is now an anti-Young-Turk exile. The assassin did succeed in killing his valet before being shot dead by Cherif’s son-in-law. Anyway, since then a French lawyer, Georges Desbons, who claims to have information about another planned assassination attempt, was refused entry at Cherif’s house (possibly because the last stranger to turn up had a gun and a dagger and a Koran), so now he’s demanding an apology or a duel with Cherif, because of course he is.

A jury in Bunzlau, Germany, refuses a police demand that a man be convicted of disturbing the public police for sneezing too loudly.

Bulgaria sells Turkey 200,000 rifles it captured from Turkish troops during the Balkan war.

Venezuela says that it will not be able to hold congressional and state elections next month because of the state of rebellion and because Gen. Gomez really doesn’t want to give up power. They may not have said the last part out loud.

Mexican rebels are either issuing their own currency now or counterfeiting it, it’s not really clear. Anyway, 10 million pesos in paper money of this currency were seized in Chicago, but since the US doesn’t recognize any Mexican government, the money can’t be considered counterfeit under US law and will be given back.

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