Today -100: March 29, 1926: Of pretenders, bread, loop the loops, and glaciers

Obit of the Day -100: Prince Louis Philippe, who had been the pretender to the French throne since 1894 for the Orléanist royal line, dies of pneumonia at 57 in Sicily. His great-grandfather was deposed by the 1848 revolution. Exiled from France more than once, LP was imprisoned when he tried to return to offer to do his military service. He filled his time never being king by serving in the British army; trying to join the French, Russian, Belgian and Italian armies; hunting; climbing mountains in Tibet; being an anti-Dreyfusard; getting named in multiple divorce cases (the dude, sorry, Duke, liked to fuck). It was a busy life but a useless one.

Americans are eating less bread, partly because home baking is declining. Also, sliced bread hasnt been invented yet (it will in a couple of years).

Aviatrix Sophie Elliot-Lynn (whose name was seemingly never spelled the same way twice) loops the loop, the first woman to do so in Britain. She also does a spinning nosedive and other stunts. She scoffs at the thought that all this shit is dangerous: “Airplanes have been brought to such perfection that there is little danger.” She will have a minor crash in 1929 but it will be a fall down the stairs of a London tram that will kill her in 1939.

A group of US and Canadian scientists apply to the Danish government to go to Greenland with some thermite to blow up glaciers to clear the sea routes and because it would be fun.

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Today -100: March 28, 1926: Of cursed tombs, downing pens, furniture, highest destinies, and horsies and buggies

Georges Bénédite, Egyptologist and curator of the Louvre, dies in Luxor, the 6th victim of the Vengeance of Tutankhamen™.

A playwrights’ strike is averted. Their beef with producers had something to do with musical numbers being performed by bands.

Grace Coolidge, redecorating the White House in early Colonial style, appeals to the nation for free furniture. See, that sort of furniture “cannot be purchased” because it is handed down generation to generation, so people should stop doing that and instead donate it, free, to the White House.  (The White House will deny asking for free furniture, but I notice it took several days for them to do so).

The textile strikers in Passaic, NJ (yes, the strike is still going on) call for the arrest of  Chief of Police Richard Zober and 12 other cops for assault. Of course an arrest warrant was already issued 3 weeks ago, but no one could be prevailed upon to serve it. The ACLU is threatening civil suits. 

Wyoming Gov. Nellie Tayloe Ross tells some Girl Scouts that freedom for women is great and everything, but “I am old-fashioned enough, however, to believe that no career is as glorious or satisfying as that which wifehood and motherhood offers, and it is there she fulfills her highest destiny.”

Chicago mayoral election news: the Post Office is unable to find 50,000 addresses of registered voters, presumably fake ones. And Mayor Big Bill Thompson and his competitor, State’s Attorney Robert Crowe, both file libel actions against The Chicago Evening Post for reporting that they’d gotten into a fist fight. They say they didn’t (a likely story).

In 1881, Sheriff S. Foster Black arrested “Edwin Turner” for stealing a horse and buggy in Binghamton. Turner then escaped from the Broome County, New Jersey jail, going out the window on a rope tied from sheets, as was the custom, was re-captured and then, while being transported, escaped from a train via, what else, the bathroom window. Now, 45 years later, Black, who is now a 91-year-old deputy sheriff (and was the one who allowed him to use that bathroom), spots a newspaper picture of one Edwin Turner Osbaldeston, who claims to be the oldest survivor of the Crimean War, so Black arrests him yet again. Osbaldeston, 93, is a retired doctor in Ashbury Park. He claims this is a case of mistaken identity and that he has never been in Binghamton in his life (a likely story).

George Hir, Hungarian deputy from the fascist Awakening Hungarians party, dies from poisoning. His wife denies that it was a suicide, insisting he was murdered by the Doublecross League of Blood, something related to the fascist plot to counterfeit French franks to finance a coup.

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Today -100: March 27, 1926: Beloved or feared and respected by all

Sen. Walter Edge (R-NJ) introduces a resolution for a referendum in every state on modifying prohibition to permit less boozy booze. For some reason, this would be on the 1928 rather than the 1926 ballot.

Mussolini celebrates the 7th anniversary of the Fascist movement with “the severe discipline of the strong.” “At home the government has solved formidable problems with the consent of the people, while opposition of all sorts was dispersed.” Because nothing says consent like dispersing opposition of all sorts. The Moose continues, Trumpily: “Abroad Fascist Italy is beloved or feared and respected by all, in spite of the impotent maneuvers of the old and outcast political parties we have definitely wiped out.”

Ruth Bryan Owen, William Jennings Bryan’s daughter, announces that she is considering running for the Florida Legislature. She won’t; she’ll run for the US Congress instead. She’ll lose, but she’ll win in 1928.

The Holy Synod in Moscow, which rules the Red faction of the Russian Orthodox Church, will abolish monasticism. Monks will be required to take up some useful profession.

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Today -100: March 26, 1926: Of fake Spanish women, real miracles, former royals, and castor-oil and rubber-club adolescences

Luis Fernando / Luigi Ferdinando d'Orléans, a French AND Spanish prince who was expelled from France for “bad conduct” in 1924 and then stripped of his Spanish princely privileges, is arrested by customs officials on the Spanish/Portuguese border (the article doesn’t specify which country’s officials) on suspicion of smuggling (nor does it specify what he was smuggling), disguised as a Spanish woman.

Headline of the Day -100:

(The article does not explain what the hell he’s talking about).

12.5 million signatures have been collected in Germany for a plebiscite on confiscating without compensation the properties of all the former royal families. That’s enough signatures to force the holding of the plebiscite.

The NYT says that Mussolini isn’t getting blowback from the Matteotti trial because he’s successfully ascribed the 1924 murder to an earlier phase of Fascism. “The movement has outgrown its castor-oil and rubber-club adolescence.”

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Today -100: March 25, 1926: Guilty guilty guilty

The trial for the murder of Giacomo Matteotti ends with 2 of the defendants acquitted and 3 found guilty of unintentional murder. Amerigo Dumini, Albino Volpi and Ameleto Poveromo (whose name in his Italian Wikipedia article is translated by my web browser as Hamlet the Poor Man) are sentenced to nearly 6 years, but will get the benefit of time served and an amnesty law for political murders and be out in a couple of months. Dumini and Hamlet the Poor Man will be re-tried after World War II and get longer sentences. Dumini will electrocute himself while changing a lightbulb in 1967.

The New Jersey Hotel Men’s Association is fighting a bill in the NJ Lege which would allow black people denied service in hotels, theatres, restaurants, etc to sue for $500.

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Today -100: March 24, 1926: I never heard a more self-complacent speech in my life

The Reichstag defeats a motion of no confidence in Chancellor Hans Luther 259 to 141 after Luther tells them that the Locarno treaties form the basis of his policies. The debate features the debut speech of Grand Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz, the unrestricted-submarine-warfare guy from the last war, who says Locarno and the League of Nations would bring Germany “into complete dependency on France,” adding, “but not in some kinky sexual way.” He may not have said the last bit.

In the British Parliament, Foreign Sec. Austen Chamberlain survives a resolution brought by former PM David Lloyd George to reduce his salary (by how much is not specified here) after a vote of 325 to 136. Chamberlain’s speech was marked by “ill-temper” and “a feeling of self-satisfaction,” was “conspicuous for length rather than clearness, for acidity of tone rather than power of argument.” Former PM Ramsay MacDonald says “I never heard a more self-complacent speech in my life.” Everyone’s a critic.

At the Matteotti trial, the lawyers for 3 of the accused say that Matty totally brought it on himself by not surrendering after the Fascists “conquered” but continued to “torment” the poor Fascists until they could take it no more. Part of this blame-the-victim approach is to assert that they killed him because he was a nasty person and not because he was an MP; there’s a special penalty for people who murder MPs.

is a claim I’m pretty sure we’ve seen a few times before.

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Today -100: March 23, 1926: When Irish elves are smiling

The NY State Senate kills bills to restore state enforcement of Prohibition.

Vera, Countess Cathcart’s play Ashes of Love opens on Broadway, with the countess playing the lead role. The audience found it “dull” and laughed in all the wrong places, according to the NYT. She evidently sucks as both a playwright and an actor.

Mysterious “elfin” music is heard near Milltown, Ireland.  Hundreds have traveled thence to catch a glimpse of the elves.

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Today -100: March 22, 1926: Of dictators and humanized public institutions

Headline of the Day -100:

No kidding.

Actually, the article, which does not mention Herr Hitler at all, is about media tycoon Alfred Hugenberg, the Rupert Murdoch of his day, whose far-right German National People’s Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, or DNVP) is still a couple of inches shy of fascism. HuggyBear’s preferred dictator, if any, is not revealed.

Labor Secretary James J. Davis is evidently so vital to the functioning of the federal government that Coolidge told him not to run for governor of Pennsylvania, so he says he won’t, although he does inform us of what his platform would be if he did run, which he says he won’t. He would “humanize our public institutions,” which is a good way of describing reforms or probation and juvenile courts and abolishing poor houses. He really won’t run for governor, although it sure sounds like he’s champing at the bit. He will be elected to the US Senate in 1930.

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Today -100: March 21, 1926: Of vets-screwer-overs, illinium, and nipples

Charles Forbes, the former head of the Veterans’ Bureau, which he and his cronies robbed blind, begins a two-year sentence at Leavenworth, of which he’ll serve 20 months.

Element #61 has been discovered by scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and named illinium. In other news: no, they haven’t, they just think they have. Which is probably why my computer doesn’t recognize the word “illinium.”

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: March 20, 1926: Is it a dog or a fish?

John Calvin Coolidge Sr. deeded his farm to Pres. Coolidge 3 weeks ago and other property before that. Inheritance tax avoidance? The deed was actually owned until 3 weeks ago by the estate of his father, Calvin Galusha Coolidge, who died in 1878. The successful businessman/farmer/etc died supposedly penniless and without a will.

NYT Op-ed on JCC Sr.: “The most that could be got out of his close-lipped Yankee taciturnity was the expression of his belief that his son would do ‘fairly well’ as President.”

King George visits a London exhibition of Canadian artists and is baffled, by a Futurist painting, as was the custom, asking “Is it a dog or a fish?” (the artist is sadly unidentified, nor is the species depicted in the artwork revealed, which is just poor journalism). 

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Today -100: March 19, 1926: Of Seniors and challengers

Pres. Coolidge’s father, Col. John Calvin Coolidge Sr., dies at age 80. A retired JP and former Vermont legislator and senator, Senior also occupied posts ranging from constable to road commissioners to town selectman. The president was informed onboard the train he was taking to Senior’s bedside.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Land of Mist is published, in which he shits on his Professor Challenger character, who discovers the spirit world, or something. At least Doyle didn’t do this to Sherlock Holmes.

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Today -100: March 18, 1926: Of leagues, gross immorality, and pygmies

The League of Nations Assembly fails to admit Germany to the League because of the whole fight about who gets to join the Council and in what order. Everybody’s blaming Brazil. The League will take this up again in the next session in five months.

Famous biologist J.B.S. Haldane, who will coin the word “clone,” at least in its modern sense, wins his appeal against his expulsion from the Cambridge University staff by the Sex Viri committee (If you are at work, do not google “sex viri”) for “gross immorality” because he was named as a respondent in the divorce case of Charlotte Franken, which some people seem to think is none of Cambridge’s business. He will marry Franken later in the year.

An expedition to Dutch New Guinea led by Berkeley Prof. Matthew Stirling begins next month. It’s looking for pygmies, as one does.

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