Today -100: March 9, 1915: Gott strafe England

Britain will segregate the prisoners captured from the sunken German U-boat U-8 for possible war crimes trials after the war. The British are still undecided on whether their condemnations of Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare policies mean that submariners should be treated as pirates.

The US is sending more warships to Mexico. Carranza has invited foreign diplomats to follow him in leaving Mexico City for Vera Cruz, although he claims this is in no way a ploy to get them to recognize him as the one true president of Mexico. They have declined his invitation, because they don’t want to be seen abandoning their nationals in Mexico City to the rampaging mobs.

Various stories in today’s paper say that Germany is totally convinced it will win the war by the end of the year, because Russia will collapse at any moment, while Russia is totally convinced it will the war, because Turkey will collapse at any moment.

Oh, and Germans are replacing the phrase “Auf Wiedersehen” at the end of conversations with “Gott strafe England” (God punish England).

Yes, that is the origin of the word “strafe” in English c.1915, to mean attack or bomb. The more specific current meaning dates from World War II.

Harry Thaw, the famous murderer, is still fighting in court to prevent his return to the Matteawan insane asylum, a year and a half after his escape. He claims that he was sane at the time he escaped, therefore he was being illegally confined and it was not illegal for him to escape.

Headline of the Day -100:

He took as the text of his sermon that famous religious tome Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde “and illustrated his points with a mixture of baseball yarns and Bible narratives translated into street slang.”

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