Today -100: January 30, 1915: Of weekend trippers, bootblacks, and false teeth

British Prime Minister Asquith’s wife Margot is stopped by French soldiers on the way to the front with some other guests. They were supposed to be having a nice weekend at a villa behind the lines of a war zone, as you do. Instead, they weren’t allowed to go on or return, ostensibly because French supply trucks were coming through, really because Gen. Joffre is getting annoyed with all the weekend tourists. It used to be a nice war zone until people started discovering it on Yelp, and now it’s all crowded and noisy and you can’t park...

Headline of the Day -100: “Wants Japanese in Poland.” Past and future prime minister of France and past, current, and future dick Georges Clemenceau wants 150,000 Japanese soldiers brought in to fight the Germans.

Russian troops have pushed through Austrian Poland into Hungary. Austria-Hungary had kinda hoped to keep the fighting confined to Poland.

The NYT doesn’t seem to have taken to heart Serbia’s request to be called Serbia rather than Servia.

A negro bootblack in Glendale, CA is sent to prison for 6 months and fined $250 for giving a white woman a suggestive note – or an extra 250 days if he can’t pay the fine, which obviously he can’t.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Teeth in Court, Can’t Chew.” A dentist sued for non-payment for a set of false teeth ($20 + car fare), which hurt, then they were sandpapered but now they they fell out, then the dentist fixed them with powder which made the guy sick so that he couldn’t eat or chew tobacco, etc. The court ruled in favor of the dentist, who then left town while the old guy’s teeth were still locked up in the evidence room, and... maybe you had to be there.

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