Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Today -100: May 31, 1923: Of mysterious deaths, pingers, undesirable tributes, and cardioscopes


Jess W. Smith, the, er, assistant to Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty (he had a desk outside Daugherty’s office at Justice but wasn’t actually on the government payroll – he was the massively corrupt Daugherty’s bagman), commits suicide in the hotel suite he shared with Daugherty (no, not like that, or maybe exactly like that), shooting himself in the head. The administration is putting it out that Smith had health worries, but the crime scene was scrubbed by Bureau of Investigation chief William Burns, who lives in the same hotel, and the gun mysteriously disappears and there’s no autopsy, and he seems to have shot himself in the left temple despite being right-handed, and...

The Chinese bandits release a couple of American hostages, including Maj. Roland Pinger, which is certainly the name of a person and not of a sex toy.

The Rockville Centre, Long Island, Ku Klux Klan leave a wreath at the local war memorial on Memorial Day. The commander of the local American Legion post discovers what he calls “an undesirable tribute to the American soldier,” and hands in the wreath to the police station. Immediately calls start coming in complaining, lots of calls (Rockville Centre is a big KKK town), and the town council orders it put back, without the card (which I think had already been torn up).

The American Association of Thoracic Surgeons announces that the cardioscope has been tested on animals and “perfected” by Dr. Duff Allen of Washington University and is ready for use on humans during heart surgery.

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