Today -100: April 30, 1923: No work under bayonets

France threatens to send troops to reinforce the border between its Lebanon-Syria mandate and Turkey if the latter keeps mobilizing its troops on the border for some reason.

German workers are planning to make May Day an anti-French thing. Slogans: “Keep up the passive resistance in the Ruhr,” “Death rather than slavery,” “No work under bayonets.”

A black janitor at the University of Missouri in Columbia is taken from jail and lynched as white U students cheer. The UMo president says no students participated. Can’t imagine how he’d know that.

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Today -100: April 29, 1923: Of dancing and knitting

Speaking to a dinner of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Pres. Harding denies the rumor that the reason he supports the US joining the World Court is because he was told to by international bankers. Some of the transcript of the speech was censored by the White House because Harding was supposedly speaking not as president but as a fellow newspaper editor.

1,000 people are injured at Wembley Stadium when the crowd at a football match invades the field. King George is attending, and took advantage of the chaos to fuck a few geezers up, I’m assuming.

The mayor of Gary, Indiana, Roswell O. Johnson, is sentenced to 18 months in prison for protecting liquor interests in exchange for political favors.  A Gary sheriff & a judge get a year each and dozens of others get jail sentences & fines.

After that attack by Nazis on a Socialist meeting in Munich, Hitler declares the Nazis victims of “Red terror” and says “The hour of decision is struck. Our patience is exhausted.” Hitler, of course, was renowned for his patience. “The Soviets shall in future be answerable with their lives.” The Nazis are claiming that a Jew offered a Nazi 20 million marks, which is the equivalent of some money, to assassinate Hitler. Bavaria bans a Socialist meeting & parade on May Day to prevent violence.

The Michigan State Senate passes a bill for the sterilization of “mentally incompetent” people.

New dancing record:  130 hours (and still going) by Albert Kish. His partner, Bessie Edwards, collapsed at 66 hours but is back from the hospital. (There are also knitting marathons now, one of them anyway, but that one is called after 24 hours. It’s health ‘n safety gone mad.)

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Today -100: April 28, 1923: Of peace in Ireland?, rum, coke, Texas kluxers, and suspect airplane bears

Éamon de Valera issues a proclamation offering peace terms (after a day of house bombings and the like, just to show the IRA isn’t defeated, I guess, which it totally is). And the IRA suspends operations, but does not offer to give up its weapons, which the government says is the prerequisite for talks. De V’s terms: legitimate authority derives from the Irish people, that referenda will decide disputed questions, no loyalty oaths to the British king, etc.

Pres. Harding plans to declare a national emergency to use the Navy to stop rum-running in the Caribbean. There are some difficulties over whether he can actually do that and which department would pay for it (not us, sez the Navy).

France says it will seize all coke (er, the coal kind) in the Ruhr, with harsh penalties for anyone who gets in their way. As part of this, all public bathhouses will be closed.

Bavarian Nazis (a term which won’t be in use for some years, by the way, and not by the Nazis, but the policy of this blog is to call a Nazi a fucking Nazi) attack a Socialist meeting. Police give up on intervening in the violence when the Nazis start shooting.

Former US Sen. Henry Hollis (D-NH, 1913-19) is now a polygamist. He got a divorce in Bulgaria last year and then remarried in Italy, but now the government of Bulgaria has decided it doesn’t recognize the Unitarian church that granted him the divorce, and has closed the church.

During a concert in the Texas Legislature chamber performed by the St. John Orphanage for Negroes, 70 Klansmen in full regalia stroll in, presumably interrupting the music, hand some money to the chorus’s leader, then give a little speech about the principles of the Klan.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Suspect airplane bears are the worst kind of airplane bears.

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Today -100: April 27, 1923: Of simple Scots maids, women hunger striking and/or smoking

Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s Prince Albert, 27 – you know, the King’s Speech guy – at this point 3rd in line to the throne, and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, 22. The marriage is considered “modern” because he’s marrying a filthy commoner (her parents are only a Scottish earl and a countess, so I guess commoner but not commonest).

Éamon de Valera was not captured. The Irish Free State executes another rebel, but releases Nellie Ryan and Annie O’Neil, who were hunger-striking. Ryan is the sister-in-law of Defence Minister Richard Mulcahy.

The University of Maryland suspends 2 women students for smoking. The university president is now threatening never to let them back, because they’ve hired a lawyer.

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Today -100: April 26, 1923: I feel as clean as snow

Éamon de Valera is reported to have been captured and the news kept secret for several days.

He has not been captured.

The AP has a profile on 23-year-old Russian judge Anna Gluzman, if by profile you mean “She is slim and short, not at all pretty: her brown wavy hair is bobbed and parted on the side like a man’s”. Like a man’s!

In the Bavarian Diet, a Socialist measure to dissolve the extremist “storm organizations,” Nazi groups among others, is defeated by a large majority. Bavarian Interior Minister Franz Schweyer defends such groups as healthy and a natural outgrowth of the will of the people to change unbearable circumstances and “is perfectly understandable and to be hailed.” Schweyer was pretty anti-Nazi, even before being made a prisoner during the Beer Hall Putsch and thrown into prison in the ‘30s, so I don’t understand this.

There’s also a fight in the national Reichstag over a bill against breaking up meetings which is aimed at the workers rather than the far right.

The Pennsylvania Legislature bans any city adopting daylight saving. Philadelphia says fuck that and asks everyone to do it anyway.

Former Mississippi Gov. Theodore Bilbo gets out of prison after serving 10 full days for contempt of court. He says “I feel as clean as snow, purged of any suggestion of contempt.” And he’ll be running for governor.

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Today -100: April 25, 1923: Oh good, we were worried about that cellar door

A second Lausanne Conference opens, and...

The conference was supposed to discuss only economic & financial matters, but the Turkeys opened, arrogantly I guess, with a demand that France and Britain set a date for the evacuation of Constantinople and Chanak.

Speaking to the annual Associated Press lunch, Pres. Harding repeats his desire to join the World Court, denying that it’s a slippery slope to joining the League of Nations, which he says the US won’t do “by the side door, back door, or cellar door.”

The New York Legislature repeals the Lusk Anti-Sedition Laws, 8 Republicans from NYC joining all Democrats.

16 dance marathoners give up. Evidently dancing on a fishing boat outside the 3-mile limit to avoid police interference just leads to sea sickness.

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Today -100: April 24, 1923: Of recognition, white man’s governments, patriarchs, compulsory matrimony, and head-measuring

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes announces that there will be a joint Mexican-American commission that might even lead to the US finally recognizing the Mexican government.

The Supreme Court hears arguments in 4 cases about laws in California and Washington barring Asians from owning or leasing land. Chief Justice William Howard Taft asks Cal. Attorney General Ulysses Webb “what the Japanese are doing to which you take objection.” Webb responds that “The white people refuse to assimilate with the Japanese, and as the Japanese line advances we retreat, and we do not like to retreat,” which you’ll have noticed is about white racism, not about the Japanese doing anything objectionable. Webb says “We had one race problem which was settled by the Civil War. There is another growing up now on the Pacific Coast that is more threatening. We have already lost the Philippines. The Japanese dominate there now. We believe this Government is a white man’s government.” Anyway, this guy was California’s attorney general for 37 years (1902-39).

The trial by Russia of Orthodox Patriarch Tikhon is postponed indefinitely.

The Turkish Assembly rejects a bill requiring everyone to be married by 25 and produce a child every 3 years.

NYC Police Commissioner Enright orders police to stop dance marathons at 12 hours, when they’re just, you know, getting started.

The British government won’t limit the amount of wine & spirits going to the Bahamas, which has seen a large increase recently. They admit that’s because it’s smuggled into the US but says if they stopped it the US would just get its illegal booze from Haiti or wherever.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: April 23, 1923: Of bobbed-hair girl judges, dancing, patriarchs, and mummies

Headline of the Day -100:  

There’s a bill in the NY Legislature to allow children to go to the movies without adults, which I didn’t realize they couldn’t. Under the bill they’d be allowed, but only in separate a children’s section, with a matron in charge. The NY Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is against the bill, because “it is unthinkable that children, and especially growing boys and girls, should be thus herded together indiscriminately in darkened auditoriums” and what if there were a fire panic?

New dancing record: 102 hours, 30 minutes, and the dude, R.J. Newman in Dallas, is still going. Surgeon General Hugo Cumming warns of the dangers of prolonged dancing: possible dilation of the heart, sudden death, shattered nervous systems leaving them prey to disease...

Russia is about to put on trial Dr. Tikhon, Patriarch of all the Russias of the Russian Orthodox Church. The press claims to have a confession by Tikhon admitting to having had contact with Whites such as Adm. Kolchak: The Night Stalker, conniving with British and French consuls, blessing the Tsar and his family, calling for resistance to the seizure of church property, etc.

Headline of the Day -100:  

I could explain that, but it would just be a let-down.

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Today -100: April 22, 1923: With us it was a case of smoke or die

It seems the woodcutters of South Fox Island in Lake Michigan were not actually starving to death, despite the story told by the 3 who made the perilous journey to the mainland. 6 airplanes were sent to bring in supplies. 2 of them crashed on the icy airstrip, one is marooned with engine trouble, and one sensibly dropped its packages on the camp without landing. What the woodcutters were actually out of was tobacco, which they hoped would be included with the food parcels (was it, though? the article doesn’t say). “With us it was a case of smoke or die.”

The Associated Press reports “the first inkling” that French forces have been attacking Taza tribespeople in northern Morocco for the last 9 days, although presumably the Taza had some inkling that they were being shelled and bombed by planes (yes, I’m thinking of the “secret bombing” of Cambodia).

A story from the Jewish Telegraph Agency about anti-Semitic violence at the University of Bucharest astonishingly reinforces anti-Semitic views by referring to “Rumanian students” attacking “Jewish students.” Ditto at the University of Czernowitz, where Jewish students are forced out of the grounds and lectures are suspended.

Prohibition Commissioner Roy Asa Haynes suspends 4 agents, including the South Carolina state director after agents shoot at a car that turns out to contain 2 YWCA workers, blowing out its tire.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: April 21, 1923: Of knaves & pustifications

Republicans are pleading with Harding to drop his plan to join the World Court.

Ireland applies to join the League of Nations.

The House of Commons gets to vote on total prohibition for the first time. It votes no, 236-14.

Novelist Upton Sinclair wins a libel case in Austria against Max Hussarek for a book review in which the former prime minister called him a “knave.” Hussarek defended the case claiming pustification. That’s a NYT typo, not a real word, but I had to look it up just to make sure it wasn’t an Austrian legal term or something. That said, pustification should totally be a real word. Anyway, Sinclair is awarded 500,000 crowns, which is the equivalent of some money.

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Today -100: April 20, 1923: Of internationals, stürmers, and dancing

An International Middle Class Conference of all the national middle-class political parties is called for Berne in September to create a Bourgie International.

A mob of unemployed people besiege the city hall in Mülheim on the Ruhr. Is it a Communist-Syndicalist plot or just pissed-off poor people? Mülheim is not one of the towns occupied by the French, but city authorities ask the French to help, because there are few cops left in the town after the French disbanded the Security Police. The French refuse to intervene because why would they want to stop Germans fighting each other?

New newspaper: Der Stürmer. Not an official Nazi paper but, you know, a Nazi paper.

New dancing record: Jane Murray of Cleveland, a waitress, 90 hours and 10 minutes. While doing that, she also set the couples’ record, at 57 hours, before her partner dropped out (wimp).

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Today -100: April 19, 1923: America is dancing herself into war

Yankee Stadium opens. Babe Ruth hits its first home run. Yay.

The Florida Legislature’s lower house votes to keep the peonage system of leasing out convicts, but abolish flogging.

In Orange, Texas, a mob gathers outside the jail holding Clarence Smith, a black man accused of writing improper notes to white women. Before they can lynch him, he cuts his throat and is now dying. “The crowd was quieted.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Bavarian government thinks the Leipzig court’s warrants on Hitler and two editors should be executed.

The Polish National Assembly rejects the Jewish deputies’ proposal for consideration (I assume that means debate/discussion) of the recent anti-Semitic riots. Nationalist deputies then physically attack the Jewish deputies as they walk out. (I assume there isn’t an actual Jewish Party; would be nice to know their actual party affiliation[s]).

New (sigh) dancing record:  Arthur Klein of Cleveland, 82 hours and still going (he’ll make it to 88 hours only to have his record immediately broken). Also, just since yesterday’s paper there have been new records set for women & for couples. Vera Sheppard, a record-setter Tuesday, says “The only thing that annoyed me was having a man’s arm around me all the time.”  The D.C. police can’t find any law they can use to stop dance marathons there, although they would dearly love to, according to Mina Van Winkle, who is chief of the D.C. police women’s bureau and not, as her name suggests, a character in a mediocre children’s book. “A dance epidemic always precedes national disaster, as clouds precede a storm,” she says. “America is dancing herself into war.”

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Today -100: April 18, 1923: Of death lashes, duces in a hurry, dancing, patriotic textbooks, chekas, and pharaonic umbrellas

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Florida Legislature’s investigation of the peonage system hears
from a guard at the Putnam Lumber Company prison camp, who says 1 to 5 rented prisoners were whipped every day, and describes the death of Martin Tabert, who’d been convicted of stowing away on a freight train, after being flogged over 100 times. Tallahassee Sheriff Jones was paid $20 per prisoner. Plus fees. Which it sounds like he kept. So he ordered his deputies out in force to meet trains and grab people riding the rails. Oh, and Tabert’s parents sent money to pay his fine, but Jones sent it back because he’d already sold Tabert into slavery. Sorry, peonage.

Benito Mussolini gets a speeding ticket.

That dance marathon that fox-trotted its way from New York to New Jersey back to New York and then over to Connecticut has been halted by local cops, although they kindly wait until Vera Sheppard of Long Island City set a new record of 69 hours. Madeline Gottshick of Cleveland, holder of the previous record of 66 hours, 6 minutes, casts doubt on Sheppard’s claim, since some of those 69 hours were spent dancing in vans between venues, unwitnessed.

Incidentally, aviation endurance records are also being broken, with an army monoplane flying non-stop for 36 hours.

The NY Senate passes the Higgins Patriotic Text Book Bill 35-9. Textbooks must emphasize the US’s victories in every war it has fought. Mostly this bill is about the Revolutionary War, as some books have been deemed too pro-British.  So textbooks must now uphold the existence of the British oppressions mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Which has to be quoted in its entirety. And they must not mention the human failings of revolutionaries unless their virtues are given at least equal prominence.

Hitler gets his summons to the Leipzig Supreme Court. His newspaper says he won’t go and calls the court the “Leipzig Cheka.” Sick burn, Adolf.

The Soviet Union says it will accept 300,000 Armenian refugees from Turkey.

King Fuad of Egypt is not happy with the proposed constitution written by the constitution commission because it says the people are the source of power and does not give him absolute powers. I don’t know what the point of a constitution even is if the king has absolute powers.

Speaking of Egyptian kings, Tut-a-mania continues, with fashion shows, balls, and of course umbrellas, just like the boy king’s slaves carried, probably.

Available at Gimbels.

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Today -100: April 17, 1923: Of bilbos, death dancing, dead whales & ghostly accusers

Former Mississippi Gov. Theodore Bilbo is sent to jail for 30 days for contempt of court for failing to show up as a witness in the lawsuit against current Gov. Lee Russell brought by the secretary he impregnated and forced to get an abortion.  Which means Bilbo will have to make his announcement that he is running for governor again from the Lafayette County Jail. (Update: the 30-day sentence will be reduced to 10, with no fine.)

Pres. Harding allows former congresscritter Alice Robertson to be appointed as a welfare worker in the Veterans Bureau without having to take a civil service exam.

Tory newspapers in Britain complain about a “conspiracy” to force PM Bonar Law’s resignation by saying he’s about to resign because of ill health.

While Boston, Flint, Buffalo & other cities are shutting down dance marathons, Chicago’s health commissioner Herman Bundesen says “Chicago health authorities will not interfere with any one who wishes to dance himself to death.”

New dancing record: Magdalene Williams of Houston (again), 65 hours and 53 minutes.

Catholic Party members in Mussolini’s government resign after he demands they pledge to support him personally rather than their party congress, which recently passed resolutions implying the party only supported the Fascist government temporarily. The highest-ranking of the resignees was minister of public works.

I’ve misplaced the link and can’t be arsed to find it, but there’s a legal dispute over who owns a dead whale, so the federal district court in Mississippi orders the evidence, all 75 tons of it, brought to court.

In Pittsburgh, Peter Capella is on trial for the murder of Rudolf Capella (no relation! but he was a boarder in the Capella – no relation!) – family house). 16-year-old Rudolf clearly committed suicide 2 years ago, but his mother Magdalene testifies that 6 months later she had a dream in which Rudolf told her that Peter murdered him. (The NYT will not follow up this story).

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Today -100: April 16, 1923: Dance dance dance

A letter from Fanny Garrison Villard, daughter of William Lloyd Garrison and an impressive activist for women’s suffrage, peace, and civil rights in her own right, responds to a story I must have missed about the War Dept planning to investigate pacifist groups because War Secretary John Wingate Weeks thinks pacifists are all socialists or Communists. She says they aren’t.

A dance marathon in New York is disrupted by police enforcing a law against events going on dangerously long, originally enacted against bicycle races. The couples dance into a van, dance onto the ferry, and continue dancing in Jersey, as was the custom. (Update: tomorrow they’ll continue dancing back to NY, chased out by the Fort Lee cops,  then to Connecticut). Mayor James Curley of Boston says he will ban dance marathons, even in private homes, as a public nuisance. And there’s a new dancing record: 65½ hours, Magdalene Williams of Houston. “A waiting limousine carried her to a Turkish bath”. Before that, there were another couple of records broken since yesterday, though an L. Kessler was disqualified “as a result of his apparent inability to keep time to the music or to do any real dancing.”

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Today -100: April 15, 1923: We won’t talk

The German court for safeguarding the Republic in Leipzig has summoned the editors of 2 anti-Semitic newspapers in Bavaria, including the Nazi Völkischer Beobachter. Both intend to resist, saying only Bavarian courts can try them. Hitler expects to receive a summons any day now (I imagine he’s a little insulted he hasn’t yet) and says he won’t go either: “We won’t talk.”

France complains about a speech by Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno at the memorial for those workers killed by French soldiers at the Krupp plant in the Ruhr, in which he used the word “enemy.”

New dancing record: 53 hours, a Miss Goldie Hughes of Houston. Or is it 8 couples and 6 individuals in Baltimore, halted at 53 hours by a police raid. One of the men proposed to his partner after several hours.

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Today -100: April 14, 1923: Of men on horseback, scraps of paper, and cake, so much cake

There have supposedly been two recent assassination attempts on Benito Mussolini (I don’t think there have been), but he continues to expose himself to assassins by using the same entrance to the city, and “Every Sunday Mussolini is seen on horseback traversing the quarter filled with Communists.”

Mussolini would really like to get rid of some of his excess population, and offers to send specially picked farm laborers to make up the US agricultural labor shortage (ag pop dropped by 460,000 in 1922 as black people fled the South). However he won’t allow US officials to inspect the selected immigrants before they leave Italy. The US would have to change its restrictive immigration laws if it wants to take up Italy’s kind offer, which of course it won’t.

William Jennings Bryan addresses the West Virginia Legislature on behalf of a bill to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools, which he says renders the Bible “a scrap of paper.”

The wedding cake of the Duke of York and Elizabeth Bowen-Lyon will be 300 pounds (weight, not money), according to the front page of the NYT.

Westinghouse will not pay license fees for music on its 4 radio stations, so it’ll be all public domain classical music and She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain from now on.

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Today -100: April 13, 1923: Of daylight saving, dinner guests, excesses, peonage, smoking women, and dancing

Belgium has adopted daylight saving time, but France has not. So this summer, trains passing through Belgium from France to Holland or Germany may have to stop for an hour at the border.

Labour members of Glasgow City Council oppose granting Princess Mary the freedom of the city when she visits in August. Their counter-offer that she be invited to dine with 100 unemployed men is voted down.

The Jewish Tribune takes exception to the article on Poland in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica which includes a section, “The Jewish Question,” which says the Eastern Jew is “rarely a producer... a race apart, hated and despised by the rest of the population, devoted to their religion, which is a primitive type of Judaism.” A lot are Hasidic, and really unclean. It says a few hundred were killed 1918-19 in “excesses,” which the Jews have “enormously exaggerated.”

The Florida Legislature is investigating its peonage system, whereby prisoners are leased out to plantations and sometimes flogged to death.

Nicola Sacco is pronounced insane.

The Irish Free State has allegedly captured Count Plunkett, whose name will never not be funny, Mary MacSwiney, and Countess Markievicz, the first woman elected to the British Parliament.

The International Olympic Committee decides to exclude Germany from the 1924 Paris games. Russia won’t be going either, nor will anti-Bolshevik Russian expatriates be allowed to participate. Austria will be allowed in.

A Kansas judge rejects George Day’s petition for divorce, saying cigarette smoking is not sufficient grounds.

New dancing record:  Helene Mayer of Cleveland, 52 hours, 11 minutes.

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Today -100: April 12, 1923: WHO CAN DENY IT???

Now Howard Carter is ill. Who can deny the Curse of Tutankhamen’s Tomb™ now?

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Radio Broadcasting Society says radio stations will continue to broadcast copyrighted songs because the stations perform a public service without profit.

Public services like... substituting for anaesthesia?

Yeah, you really want a patient laughing during their hernia surgery.

A large meeting in Bromberg, northern Poland, protesting Russia’s execution of Vicar General Monsignor Butchkavitsch, demands that all Russian Jews in Poland be interned as hostages and their property confiscated until Archbishop Zepliak is released.

Jack, the dog who used to belong to Nurse Edith Cavell until she was executed as a spy by the Germans in 1915, dies. He will be stuffed and put on display in the British Museum. He’s evidently still on view at the Imperial War Museum.

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Today -100: April 11, 1923: Broken on the wheel of maternity

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes revokes the visa of Ekaterina Kalinin, wife of  Chairman of the Soviet Union’s Executive Committee Mikhail Kalinin, in retaliation for the execution of Vicar General Monsignor Butchkavitsch. Mikhail signed the death warrant. She was due to speak in the US on behalf of the Red Cross and Russian orphans, and was already enjoined from talking about politics. She may or may not already be on her way, but if she arrives she’ll be held at Ellis Island and then deported.

The Irish Free State fatally wounds IRA Chief of Staff, the alliterative Liam Lynch. They think they nearly caught Éamon de Valera as well during the raid.

Harding, just back from a long vacation, will soon start a trans-continental trip, ending in Alaska, but he objects to people referring to it as the re-election campaign trip it so obviously is. He’s even threatening to cancel the trip – I will turn this train around! – if newspapers don’t treat him solely as a president and forget that there is such a thing as a 1924 election.

Margaret Sanger, testifying before the NY Legislature on behalf of a bill allowing doctors to give birth control information, says “the women of this state and country must free themselves from child-bearing. ... Mother love has a chance to develop and become intensified if the children are not born too close together. Hundreds of thousands of women are being bent, bowed and broken on the wheel of maternity.” Assemblycritter Louis Cuvillier (D-NYC) calls birth control advocates “blasphemers” who ought to be “swept from the face of the earth.” So that’s probably a no vote.

The Republican NY Assembly rejects Gov. Al Smith’s request that they repeal the Lusk Anti-Sedition laws.

NYC bans human flies. Harold Lloyd-type human flies, not Jeff Goldblum-type human flies.

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Today -100: April 10, 1923: Of dorms, makeup, relaxed throats, inhuman atrocities, masks, and fox trotting

Harvard University’s Board of Overseers overturns Pres. A. Lawrence Lowell’s ban on black students living in the freshman dorms and affirms that admissions should not discriminate on the basis of race or religion (i.e., Jewish quotas).

In other front-page education news, the Arkansas Supreme Court rules that schools can bar girl students wearing makeup.

What the hell is a “relaxed throat?” Anyway, it’s what British Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law supposedly has (he actually has throat cancer), which just made it impossible for anyone to hear him during Prime Minister’s Questions. So there’s talk, again, of him resigning. Which he won’t. (Also, the Tories have lost 5 by-elections in a row.)

Russia seizes synagogues to turn them into workingmen’s clubs. It plans to seize all of them.

The French expel striking German railroad workers from their homes, evidently on ten minutes’ notice, or as Pres. Ebert puts it, “the new inhuman atrocity...” (inhuman atrocities are the worst kind) “...of the French military forces against women and children driven from their homes by the African soldiery.”

Minnesota and Iowa enact laws against wearing masks, you know, like the Klan does.

The US Supreme Court overturns the District of Columbia’s minimum wage for women & female children, calling it discriminatory and a violation of the right of contract and anyway women don’t even need this because they’re all equal now.

The new dance record is 50 hours, a Miss Alma Cummings, who outlasts 7 partners. Mostly fox-trotting.

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Today -100: April 9, 1923: You know what else is unbecoming? Fascism.

The US will demand $1,187,736,867 in war damages from Germany on behalf of its citizens. This includes claims from the sinking of the Lusitania.

Columbia University Pres. Nicholas Murray Butler won’t do anything about assistant professor of Latin Dino Bigongiari just because he’s a Fascist, indeed the leader of the local Fascists. Butler says “to attempt to discipline a university teacher for his private or political opinions would be most unbecoming.” Bigongiari will remain at Columbia, retiring in 1950.

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Today -100: April 8, 1923: Of marks, death sentences, impartial juries, and doyles

Headline of the Day -100:  

Really, what is it 1923 Republicans had against blogs?

During their occupation of the Ruhr, the French have so far seized 32 billion marks, which is the equivalent of a bunch of money. But Germany can just keep printing more money, so that’s okay.

Oklahoma’s new governor J.C. Walton (D) says he will commute all death sentences. There are currently 6 condemned men on death row. Well, I say men, but one of them is Elias Ridge who is black and was 13 at the time of the murder. Gov. Walton is an engineer who years ago built the current electric chair.

6 of the coal miners on trial for murder during the “riots” during last year’s strike in Herrin, Illinois were acquitted, so the state’s attorneys drop the remaining cases, bitching that justice can’t be obtained in Williamson County as no impartial jury can be found. The judge disagrees, so we’ll see what happens.

The Society of American Magicians offers Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to reproduce spirit photographs and all the other phenomena he thinks are real.

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Today -100: April 7, 1923: Too much evidence and yet not enough

Alliterative Headline of the Day -100:  

 

Ada Emma Deane has taken pictures of soldier-ghosts attending Armistice Day events (a quick search failed to turn up these pics; sorry). She has also taken pictures of ghosts floating behind the ever-gullible Sir Arthur.

Speaking of gullible, many people in Russia think that Jupiter has escaped its orbit and will hit the earth or, more specifically, Russia, as punishment for it putting archbishops and monsignors on trial.

Headline of the Day -100:  

 

Oh phew, for a second there I thought he said blogs.

Sen. Hiram Johnson visits Italy and meets Mussolini, who he calls “the marvel of modern Italy.” Mussolini is an admirer of Theodore Roosevelt, whose running mate Johnson was.

Federal prohibition agents claim to have seized nearly $10 million in property in 1922. 69,000 arrests were made. 14 dry agents were killed on duty.

Wisconsin Gov. John Blaine signs into law a ban on woke history textbooks which “defame” the Founders or contain propaganda on behalf of foreign governments.

Next year’s Olympics in Paris will give prizes for paintings, sculptures, architecture, etc. I first read the headline “Olympic Winners to Get Art Prizes” as meaning that the winners in, say, pole vaulting, would get to go home with a nice painting.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the “criminal syndicalism” trial in Michigan of Communist, union organizer, and Communist candidate for president in 1924, 1928 and 1932 William Z. Foster (the Z stands for Zebulon) (on further research, I find that he was born William Edward Foster but adopted the Z so mail carriers in Spokane wouldn’t confuse him with another William E. Foster; he kept the Z but didn’t use the Zebulon). The lengthy trial just ended in a hung jury. The only woman juror, Minerva Olson, explains that the evenly split jury was “just swamped with words, words, words,” in which the entire history of Communism back to 1847 was presented to the jury. “Too much evidence and yet not enough,” she says.

There is a heated debate at Ohio State University over the percentage of woman students who engage in “petting.” All of the quoted students of both sexes agree that it’s at least 50%.

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Today -100: April 6, 1923: The Egyptians had powers we know nothing of

Following Lord Carnarvon’s death, Egyptologists deny that tombs contain “secret poisons” or ancient curses. But what nefarious secrets are being covered up by Big Egyptology? The increasingly embarrassing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, just arrived in the US with a gullible Scientific American writer in tow so he can prove the existence of all things spoooooky, says Carnarvon was probably the victim of a malevolent spirit or elementals or something: “The Egyptians had powers we know nothing of.”

Soviet troops have supposedly killed – the AP uses the word “executed” but I don’t think it’s meant in the juridical sense – 340 Ukrainian peasants protesting the execution of Monsignor Constantine Butchkavitsc. There are also pogroms of Jews in Ukraine, which I assume are related to the execution, since anti-Semitic violence is certainly the preferred reaction in Poland.

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Today -100: April 5, 1923: Of curses, anti-Passover, klandidates, illegal time, and dancing

The Earl of Carnarvon dies of blood poisoning from an insect bite, the first victim of the Curse of Tutankhamen’s Tomb™.

Russian Jewish Communists hold some sort of parody Passover event at Krementshug in the Ukraine, getting into a fight with observant Jews. The Jewish Communists want Jews to go to work on Jewish holidays and give their wages for those days to the Red Army & the labor movement.

Harding was considering hiring a press agent, but abandons the idea because everyone tells him the optics of the government paying for propaganda aren’t great.

In Tuesday’s elections, the KKK fails to defeat 3 Catholic candidates for the East St Louis City Council, and the one candidate it does get elected immediately repudiates them. Klan candidates for Dallas city offices, however, all win, as do those in various cities in Kansas, including Wichita and Kansas City.

The lower house of the Connecticut Legislature passes a bill making it illegal to display any time other than Standard Time on clocks or even watches.

The new dance record is 33 hours and 15 minutes. A French university student.

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Today -100: April 4, 1923: Of dry turks, devers, roosevelts, and greatly affected popes

Constantinople is now dry, with violations punishable by beatings.

William Dever (D) is elected mayor of Chicago, replacing Big Bill Thompson (R). D’s also now hold 38 of 50 seats on the City Council.

Progressive Republicans from the West are pushing for Harding to drop Coolidge as his running mate in ‘24 and replace him with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Teddy Roosevelt Jr. They think there are too many New Englanders in the Harding administration. TR JR has been saying he doesn’t want the job.

Russia executes Monsignor Constantine Butchkavitsch, by firing squad or shot by a single executioner, depending on which story you believe. They keep it secret for several days. Pope Pius is said to be “greatly affected.” The Russian response to Britain’s protest is so gosh darn rude (it mentions British executions in India and Ireland) that Britain refuses to take it.

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Today -100: April 3, 1923: They will never put the Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan in City Hall

In military breakthrough news, Russia says it has discovered a means of harnessing the latent energy of the atmosphere to hurl objects of any size almost unlimited distances. And the US Army says it has developed a gas mask impervious to all poison gases, including carbon monoxide and... wait, they’ve been using cocoanut shells to make gas masks up until now?

(Update: I’m informed the Russia story may have been a joke  – does Russian even have April Fools Day? – that was taken seriously.)

Mobs rampage through the Jewish district of Jassy, Romania.

A grand jury investigating last year’s trial of Illinois Gov. Len Small indicts three men for conspiracy, including two fixers and one of the jurors, who after the trial was appointed deputy state game warden. Authorities are still looking for two witnesses, including a Chicago detective and labor leader “Umbrella Mike” Boyle.

The Chicago mayoral election takes place today. The last days have been marked by anonymous cards, believed to originate with the KKK, attacking William Dever (D)’s Catholicism with a fake reprint from a Catholic newspaper telling Catholics that they are Catholics first, citizens second. D’s in turn pointed out Arthur Lueder (R)’s German ancestry.

A federal judge in Kentucky rules that federal prohibition cops can stop and search cars without warrants. Another federal judge recently ruled that they can’t.

NY Gov. Al Smith vetoes a bill allowing cities of the second class, which I take to mean every city except NYC, to limit automobile speed to a minimum of 20 mph, up from the present 15 mph. Smith won’t allow this until driver’s licenses are introduced, with a driver’s test. This already exists, but only in NYC, and is opposed by upstate Republicans.

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Today -100: April 2, 1923: Monstrous bloodbaths are the worst kind of bloodbath

The French arrest four Krupp directors for complicity with the resistance to the French attempted carjacking at their plant in Essen yesterday. The death toll in that is 9 & will rise to at least 11. Pres. Ebert expresses horror at “the monstrous bloodbath which French militarism has introduced among peaceful and defenseless workmen.”

Rumor of the Day -100: Revolution in Romania! Palace stormed! King and Queen flee!

Bulgaria sentences Vasil Radoslavov, the prime minister at the start of the Great War, and 5 other Cabinet ministers to prison for life. Radoslavov is in exile, don’t know about the rest.

Marina Vega, a 15-year-old divorcee who came to LA from Mexico City to pursue Charlie Chaplin, sneaks into his house and (supposedly) takes poison. The hospital releases her, and she now says Chaplin’s not so great, or he wouldn’t want to marry Pola Negri.

The dancing record is now 27 hours.

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Today -100: April 1, 1923: Of krupp killing, wet garys, klandiana, and safety

What are the French stealing today? Soldiers arrive at the Krupp works in Essen to seize its automobiles, get into a fight with Krupp workers and start shooting, with machine guns according to some reports.

The mayor of Gary, Indiana, Roswell O. Johnson, as well as a judge, prosecutor, sheriff, etc, 55 people across the political and legal sectors of the city, are convicted of conspiracy to violate the prohibition law.

Chairman of the Indiana Republican State Committee Lawrence Lyons, who resigned from the Ku Klux Klan six weeks after joining when he suddenly realized it was bad and un-American and shit, says he only joined because “I was led to believe I would be able to gain some particular advantage for the Republican organization”. So that’s okay then. (the Indiana Klan will be the largest in the country by 1924, maybe already, and it will be largely Republican, unlike in most other states).

Premiering today:

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