Today -100: February 8, 1917: Of lighthouses, internment, Parisian nightlife, and women’s suffrage

The Senate votes 78-5 to approve Wilson’s breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany.

The US Coast Guard and lighthouse services are firing all German employees who are not US citizens.

Germany is sending Romanians from occupied Romania to internment camps in Germany, in retaliation for Romania sending Germans to Siberia, which Romania says it didn’t do.

Germany is refusing permission for Americans to leave Germany, even US Ambassador James Gerhard, who will be kept along with his staff until German Ambassador to the US Count Johann von Bernstorff makes it back to Germany and maybe crews of German ships sequestered in the US as well. Gerhard is also not being allowed to send cables in code. For a country supposedly trying not to get into a war with the US, the hostage-taking seems rather ill thought-out.

A German u-boat sinks the British steamer California without warning.

The French government orders Paris theatres to close 4 days a week and suspends public transportation after 10 pm, which is the most un-French thing I’ve ever heard.

The New Hampshire state senate rejects women’s suffrage 16-7.

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