Today -100: June 26, 1914: Of unjust and obnoxious discrimination, verboten signs, butchers, bathtubs, and fires

The State Department took ten months to respond to Japan’s complaint about California’s racist alien land law (“unjust and obnoxious discrimination”). Bryan insists that the law isn’t racist but wholly economic. Japan responds, Yeah right.

Lord Brassey is briefly arrested in Kiel as a suspected spy, as he sailed his yacht’s dinghy a little too close to the imperial dockyard. Brassey notes, “There was no ‘Verboten’ sign, which is seldom failing in Germany”.

Brassey is in town for Kiel Week, which is some sort of German Navy thing. Kaiser Wilhelm visits the British ship the King George V; while on board he was nominally in supreme command of the British fleet, in which he is an admiral, and has the uniform to prove it (dude collected uniforms). There are 4 British dreadnoughts and 3 cruisers participating in Kiel Week. Nice to see the British and German navies getting along so well.

One of the men killed during the capture of Zacatecas is Col. Rodolfo “The Butcher” Fierro, the man who killed William Benton, the Scottish rancher about whom there was so much fuss.

Pancho Villa has a $1,000 porcelain bathtub shipped to him from Chicago to Juarez. With a gold-plated rubber ducky, I’m assuming.

Bank examiners investigating the failure of ousted US Sen. William Lorimer’s La Salle Street Bank discover that former Sen. Thomas Paynter (D-Kentucky), who voted to allow Lorimer to retain his seat, and indeed was on the committee investigating the bribery charges against Lorimer, had a $40,000 loan from Lorimer’s bank.

The Prince of Wales is now so worried about the possibility of meeting a militant suffragette that when he sees two women coming towards him while he’s at the beach, he dives into the water and swims away.

Salem, Massachusetts is hit by a large fire, caused by witchcraft, probably.

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