Today -100: May 31, 1924: Of checks, franks, and klan wreaths

Headline of the Day -100:  

If by “check” you mean “death.” But he’s a Gurkha, thus the lack of dismay. Shamsherpun by name. He won’t be the last check.

Nathan Leopold, 19, and Richard Loeb, 18, are arrested for the murder of Bobby Franks, 14 (the murderers’ ages are reported correctly, but the NYT can’t make up its mind about Franks, despite having had days to get it right). Leopold, who doesn’t seem to know when to shut up, says the state’s attorney asked him if he’d ever read any works dealing with perversion; he answered that he’d read 16th-century bad boy and renowned homosexualist Pietro Aretino’s I Ragionamenti, which is about prostitution.

The Allies demand that Germany allow the resumption of inspections of its military, which Germany ended at the start of the Ruhr occupation. Germany says the provision of the Versailles Treaty allowing inspections has expired since Germany has toooootally disarmed, and inspections should now shift from the Allies to the League of Nations. The Allies refuse to believe that Germany has toooootally disarmed, with good reason, and say it’s up to them and not Germany to decide when the conditions have been fulfilled.

The German Nationalists give up their attempt to form a government in which they would have control over all the major positions and impose their own foreign policy and get control of Prussia. For some reason the moderate parties didn’t want to go along with that. So Pres. Ebert asks Wilhelm Marx to try again to form a new government.

In KKK Memorial Day news, a K.K.K. wreath is placed at the war memorial in Hicksville, Long Island, causing a kerfuffle since the parade there was organized by the Knights of Columbus, the 3 Hicksville Great War dead all having been members. That wreath was placed furtively during the parade, but in Binghamton, kluxers in kluxer regalia (but without masks) attempt to place a wreath on the local monument and are dispersed by a single Civil War vet, who threatens them with his cane, which is made from wood from the Andersonville prisoner of war camp.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Same.

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