Today -100: June 19, 1924: Of assassins, truces, smuts, and ma’s

Mussolini claims that almost everyone involved in the kidnapping and presumed murder of Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti has been arrested. One was caught by a submarine chaser, one was apprehended in the Alps trying to reach Switzerland, and 3 were caught on a steamer about to leave for Albania.

The Royal Ascot horsie race bans women smoking in the royal enclosure in response to the scandal of one woman breaking that unwritten rule of etiquette.

Democrats have reportedly negotiated a “truce” whereby William Randolph Hearst and his newspapers won’t attack Al Smith anymore.

South African PM Gen. Jan Smuts’s South African Party badly loses parliamentary elections. Smuts loses his own Pretoria seat. But at least the country will still have a Boer War general as PM. J.B.M. Hertzog of the National Party will become the new PM on a platform of disfranchising the black voters in the Cape Province.

Miriam Ferguson, wife of former Texas Gov. James Ferguson (1915-7), is herself running for governor. He can’t do it because he was impeached and barred forever from holding state office for acts of embezzlement, corrupt banking practices, trying to bribe the speaker of the house to prevent the impeachment, and threatening the University of Texas. “Ma” Ferguson is running on “Pa”’s old platform and says she’s running to clear the family name so that her grandson might one day be able to run for office with the stigma of grandpappy’s impeachment wiped out by the “rebuke” to it of her being elected. She is the first woman to run for governor in the US.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.