Today -100: January 28, 1914: Of canal governments, rubber warships, exiles, coups, lions, and lynchings

Woodrow Wilson creates, by executive order, a government for the Panama Canal Zone, and names the Canal’s chief engineer, Col. George Goethals, governor. A bit of a conflict with New York City, which has offered him the post of police commissioner.

The British Navy is experimenting with rubber-plated warships. That just sounds dirty.

South Africa will exile 10 of the leaders of the general strike. To England. Without a trial. On a ship with no wireless that will take months to arrive.

Haitian President Michael Oreste resigns in the face of a successful revolution, and seeks asylum on a German warship. Meanwhile, American and German troops land, in order to protect their nationals and their property.

I wonder who the first person was to die making a film? Possibly Fritz Schindler, who was trying to film lions in Kenya, although he probably meant to film the exteriors of lions rather than their interiors.

A negro accused of the murder of a Mrs. Lynch in Wendell, North Carolina, is, well, the hint’s in that name, isn’t it?

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