Today -100: February 19, 1914: Of a calamity so unspeakable that the nation even yet is but beginning to think it possible

Pancho Villa takes out life insurance.

Some Mexican prisoners quietly escape from Fort Bliss: a Mexican general, Felix Terrazas, and a major.

Blind Senator Thomas Gore (D-Oklahoma) wins in court after the jury deliberates for 2½ minutes. Evidently the conspiracy to frame him for sexual assault – and it was quite clear in the trial that there was a conspiracy – was cooked up by a lawyer whose attempts to charge ridiculous fees for the transfer of Indian lands were opposed by Sen. Gore.

At Euston Station, London, a suffragette, Mary Lindsay, attacks Lord Weardale with a dog-whip. She later claims she thought he was Prime Minister Asquith, but this seems unlikely, since Weardale is joint president (one Liberal, one Tory) of the National League Opposed to Woman Suffrage. The magistrate wants her examined for insanity.

Maryland’s House of Delegates rejects women’s suffrage 60-24.

Another Jew is arrested in Kiev for “ritual murder,” but he’s released when the Christian boy who was his supposed victim turns up alive.

Pittsburgh Mayor Joseph Armstrong orders that all movie theaters be divided into three sections: one for men, one for women, and one for women accompanied by men.

Whoever’s in charge of Peru these days exiles former president Guillermo Billinghurst, ousted in a coup two weeks ago. He is put on a navy ship headed for Panama.

Pres. Wilson, not known for appointing negroes to anything, re-nominates Robert Terrell as a municipal court judge in the District of Columbia (Terrell was appointed by Taft in 1910). Sen. Vardaman (D-Miss.), who opposes negroes holding any public office, will fight the nomination.

Pres. Wilson responds to a letter from the editor of Protestant Magazine, who accuses Wilson’s secretary Joseph Tumulty (a Catholic) of keeping “any communication relating to the activities of the Roman Catholic Church” (presumably anti-Catholic communications, but I’d love to know to what specifically he was referring) off the president’s desk. Wilson says that accusation is “absurdly and utterly false.”

The London Times editorializes that Britain is “drawing [near] to a calamity so unspeakable that the nation even yet is but beginning to think it possible.” It warns the public “to fix their thoughts upon this one issue without being diverted from it by minor questions which arise from day to day.” Ireland, they’re talking about Ireland.

159 days to the start of the Great War.

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