Today -100: July 31, 1915: Never has the country been so virile

Britain executes two spies whose names it won’t release, after a secret trial. But I’m sure everyone wore wigs in court, so it’s probably all above-board and tickety-boo.

Do you hyphenate tickety-boo?

The French parliament is debating French penis size, or something. “Never has the country been so virile,” Minister of Finance Alexandre Ribot says.

Lord Northbourne, 69, says he wants to duel Kaiser Wilhelm.

The population of Warsaw is evacuating into Russia proper. They’re stripping the city of, well, everything. Especially anything the Germans could use, obviously.

Charles Becker is executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing. He was an NYPD lieutenant on the vice squad who was involved in the murder three years ago of a bookie, Herman Rosenthal, who was going to expose police corruption. Becker was the first cop ever executed for murder in the US. It took three shocks to kill him.

Haitian snipers kill two of the invading US marines, who kill 6 Haitians. 2,000 military personnel will be sent to Haiti, which is a larger force than required for the stated goal of protecting foreigners’ property. And they have a lot of machine guns. A lot.

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