Today -100: January 10, 1915: Of lotteries, pardons, and rabbits

Pancho Villa, along with miscellaneous commanders and governors on various sides of the Mexican melée, sign a treaty to stop shooting into the US and to make Naco a neutral port.

Carranza, who you would think has other worries, bans lotteries as detrimental to public morals.

Under martial law in Alsace, speaking French is now banned. A few divorces have been granted where one spouse is pro-French and the other pro-German.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Gov. Blease Pardons Everybody But Himself.” The outgoing governor of South Carolina pardons another 1,500, everyone paroled in the last four years. Plus a bunch more commutations, clemencies etc, including 17 more murderers. No governor of any state has ever pardoned as many people as Blease has, something like 3,165. There are something like 125 prisoners remaining in the state pen.

The game warden of Fairfax County, Virginia, who is named H.C. Cockrell because of course he is, says he will demand that Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan be arrested and extradited on a charge of hunting rabbits, which it is illegal for non-residents to do in Fairfax County. Bryan says he did go rabbit-hunting on Christmas Day but he didn’t shoot any rabbits.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.