Today -100: December 23, 1924: Spin doctors

Despite only having a caretaker government, Germany (Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann) asks the League of Nations about joining. It wants German participation in League military sanctions to be optional, since Germany is currently “completely disarmed.”

German Nationalists really want to be part of the next government, and are suggesting that the far-right-wing Reichswehr commander Gen. Hans von Seeckt use his... influence... to make sure of it.

Gandhi says he’ll only continue as president of the Indian National Congress if each member spins 2,000 yards of yarn a month.

F.W. Murnau’s film The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann), with Emil Jannings, premieres.

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Today -100: December 22, 1924: Of foreign invaders, balls, and endless diets of jazz

Albanian Bishop-Prime Minister Fan Noli accuses Yugoslavia of being behind the coup against him and indeed being “the foreign invader.”

To answer the question I asked, Hiram Bingham III, who will be governor of Connecticut for exactly one day before stepping down to become a US senator, will indeed hold an inaugural ball.

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover addresses the financial viability of radios. He understands that there needs to be some form of revenue to pay for programming: “The radio industry can't live on an endless diet of jazz.” He’s against licensing on the BBC model, so proposes a 2% or so tax on radio equipment (unclear if that means finished radios or radio parts – the first, commercial, BBC went bankrupt because it was financed by a tax on radios but hobbyists liked to build their own radio sets).

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Today -100: December 21, 1924: Tamed

Headline of the Day -100:  

Nailed it.

With increasing opposition in Parliament, and resignations of former supporters, Mussolini, in a surprise move, announces new elections for March or April. But first, he’s gonna change the electoral laws. Again.

Secretary of War John Weeks approves the use of federal lands in the construction of a bridge between San Francisco and Marin County. The Golden Gate Bridge will open in 1937.

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Today -100: December 20, 1924: I go to the decapitating block joyfully and happily

Pres. Coolidge appoints the secretaries of war, the navy, interior, and commerce to a new oil conservation board. He cites the need to make sure there’s oil available for airplanes for the next war, cuz it’s not like you can run them on coal.

German serial killer (or as the NYT calls him, “wholesale murderer,” the term serial killer not being coined until the ‘60s) Fritz Harmaan is convicted in a Hanover court of 24 of the 27 murders for which he was charged. He’s sentenced to death, as is his accomplice Hans Grans. Haarman says he accepts the verdict, despite being innocent of some of the murders. Before sentencing, Haarman asked not to be sent to an insane asylum: “I go to the decapitating block joyfully and happily.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

Speaking of fowl pests, Adolf Hitler is released from prison waaaay early. Disgracefully early. Five prisoners on the Bavarian left are also pardoned, just to pretend to balance things out. Only 2 of them are named in the article: Felix Fechenbach (murdered by Nazis in 1933) and Erich Mühsam (murdered by Nazis in 1934).

Spain will allow descendants of the Sephardi Jews expelled in 1492 to become citizens after two years’ residence.

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Today -100: December 19, 1924: Humanity should not think me worse than I am.

The British Columbia Legislature calls for Canada to have its own ban on Asian immigration, abrogating any treaties standing in its way. Says Minister of Mines William Sloan, “Orientals and whites will not mix.”

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx, following Gustav Stresemann’s attempt to form a cabinet, also fails. Stresemann’s Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) refuses to join a cabinet which excludes the nationalist right wing, while the Zentrum party refuses to join one which includes them.

Albanian Prime Minister (and bishop) Fan Noli is overthrown by a coup led by followers of Ahmet Zogu, the future King Zog, who is still in exile, though not for long.

Roosevelt Grisby, a 20-year-old black man, is lynched in Charleston, Missouri. He supposedly attacked a white woman, and had been arrested. He is hanged, shot, dragged behind a car, and hanged again.

Serial killer Fritz Harmaan’s trial for 27 murders concludes in Hanover. A not hugely sympathetic judge stops him talking about his military record and love for his mother, asking if he was going to recount his whole life. “No, but humanity should not think me worse than I am.”

NYT Index Typo (?) of the Day:

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Today -100: December 18, 1924: We know we do not belong to a gang of murderers

German President Friedrich Ebert asks Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann to form a government. Stresemann quickly fails to do so, as the Catholic Zentrum party refuses to sit in a Cabinet with extreme Nationalists, who they think would sabotage the Dawes Plan. Which they totally would.

The Fascist vice president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Francesco Giunta, offers to resign to face criminal charges for ordering the beating of a Fascist dissident. I doubt Giunta seriously intended resigning, but that may just be me being cynical about fucking Fascists. Anyway, Fascist deputies vote to refuse to accept the resignation or, as they put it, to allow the “Fascist revolution to be put on trial.” Sez one deputy, “we know we do not belong to a gang of murderers.” Which seems like the sort of thing you only have to say out loud if you belong to a gang of murderers. One Fascist deputy resigns in protest and far-right former prime minister Antonio Salandra (1914-16) votes no and storms out, returning later. One deputy challenges another to a duel, as was the custom. (Spoiler Alert: In March, the Chamber will refuse to allow Milan magistrates to prosecute Giunta).

Moscow denies that there were any riots about Trotsky’s exile, and indeed denies that Trotsky has left Moscow, although possibly just because he’s too ill to be moved.

Phone connections are made between London and Berlin for the first time.

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Today -100: December 17, 1924: Of binghams and prohibition

Hiram Bingham III, a former Yale (and Harvard and Princeton) professor who was elected governor of Connecticut just last month, presumably on the basis of having the most Republican-governor-of-Connecticut name, is now elected to the US Senate in a special election to replace Frank Brandegee, who committed suicide. So he’s now both governor-elect & senator-elect as well as lieutenant governor. His senatorial term won’t start until after he’s inaugurated as governor and holds his... he won’t really hold a governor’s ball, will he? He’s threatening to hold off resigning until his appointments are confirmed. Beyond his record for shortest gubernatorial term ever, Bingham is an explorer, known for having “discovered” Machu Picchu.

Attorney Gen. Harlan Stone orders an inquiry into the supposed lax enforcement of Prohibition in New Jersey.

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Today -100: December 16, 1924: Of magnetic stations, airship hook-ups, kaiser-grinches, and lynchings

The Soviet Union has discovered a brass plate stuck to a rock in the Chukchi Peninsula in eastern Siberia proclaiming the existence of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Magnetic Station, the station presumably consisting of a rock and the magnetic recordings made by a US Coast Guard cutter. The mark threatens a $250 fine or imprisonment for removing the mark, despite it being in the, you know, Bering Strait. The Soviets, who did remove the mark, protest the “gross violation” of their sovereignty by the placement of this plate. Can’t wait to see if this escalates and am thankful they didn’t have nukes in 1924.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The 1,500-foot club.

Former kaiser Wilhelm will omit the dispensing of his customary Christmas charity this year, because he is so very poor.

A smallish mob invades the Nashville General Hospital and seizes and lynches a 15-year-old black youth who had been shot trying to hold up a grocer.

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Today -100: December 15, 1924: Of dead governors and love letters

Former New York governor Martin Glynn (1913-4) “dies suddenly” of a reported heart attack. There’s even a detailed story released about his chronic back pain acting up and he was walking around his room to relieve it but he collapsed and a doctor was called but it was too late. Actually, in reality, he shot himself in the head because of unbearable spinal pain. The first Catholic governor of NY, Glynn inherited the job after William Sulzer was impeached, leading to a couple of months in which both claimed to be governor, operating from different rooms in the executive office building, which I remember as the source of many uproarious posts here. He failed to be elected in his own right in 1914. Giving the keynote at the 1916 Democratic convention, he coined the term “He kept us out of war.”

Trotsky has supposedly been exiled to the Crimea (but he’s still minister of war?), and there are, supposedly, riots in Moscow between followers & opponents of Mr. Trotsky.

The dancer Isadora Duncan is broke and considering selling the 1,000 love letters she received in what the NYT calls “her prime.” She can’t sell her Paris houses because France won’t let her go to Paris, and her husband has gone to the Caucasus to become a bandit so he can use the experience to write poems, as one does.

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