Saturday, September 26, 2015

Today -100: September 26, 1915: Of long-distance treason, idiotic Yankees, dogs, and hobo poets


The detailed NYT story on the commencement of the Battle of Loos fails to mention the British use of poison gas.

The Imperial Court of Galicia (Austrian Poland) asks a Youngstown, Ohio court to question an Austrian subject, Joseph Ciepielowski, on their behalf about treasonous remarks he supposedly made, in Youngstown, about Austria. The judge actually summons Ciepielowski, who refuses to answer.

Military attaché of the German embassy Capt. Franz von Papen says the phrase in his intercepted letter, “idiotic Yankees,” was taken out of context; he only meant the publishers of a certain New York newspaper, you know, those idiotic Yankees. Also, he complains that it’s “deuced bad form” and “ungentlemanly” to publish a man’s letter to his wife.

The US federal government says that some of the recent cross-border firefights were provoked by Texas deputy sheriffs and civilians shooting into Mexico, and asks the governor of Texas to put a stop to it.

The team of dogs that won the whatever-Alaska-had-before-the-Iditerod race is sold to the French army for use in the mountains.

IWW members are flocking to Salt Lake City to protest the forthcoming execution of “hobo poet” Joseph Hillstrom, aka Joe Hill (coiner of the phrase “pie in the sky”) for supposedly shooting a grocer and his son as part of a robbery or something. He showed up at a hospital with a bullet wound after that event, but there was never any proof that the two shootings were related. Still, he was a Wobbly, so it’s off to the firing squad for him.

Headline of the Day -100:


Passaic election officials are “puzzled” about the rights of a second-generation US-born citizen.


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3 comments:

  1. At that time the Iditarod was called the All Alaska Sweepstakes and it was won by a Norwegian immigrant named Leonhard Seppala. Interestingly, the dogs were given to him by his friend Jafet Lindeberg, who had bought the dogs as puppies to train for Roald Amundsen's trip to the North Pole but the trip was cancelled. Lindeberg was also the man who convinced Seppala to move from Norway to Nome to work for his mining company there.

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  2. BTW Scotty Allan won in 1908 and 1909 so the dogs must have been getting older.

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  3. "Passaic election officials are “puzzled” about the rights of a second-generation US-born citizen."

    How old is Trump?

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