Today -100: September 18, 1926: Of bandits & citizenship

A day or two after bandits kill Jacob Rosenthal, Mexico executes 7 of them, all Indios, with more to come. Their bodies will be left hanging from trees, as was the custom. 3 more are killed when their compadres attempt to rescue them.

France has been arresting naturalized US citizens who were born French for evading military service to their former country. Also, American citizens born in France to American parents.

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Today -100: September 17, 1926: We oppose the return of the saloon

The Connecticut Democratic State Convention calls for repeal of the 18th Amendment, calling it “an indefensible curtailment of personal liberty.” But it says as long as the indefensible curtailment of personal liberty remains the law of the land it should be enforced, and “We oppose the return of the saloon.” 

The L.A. County orders the arrest of Aimee Semple McPherson, her mother, and three others involved in her disappearance last May. The charge: conspiracy to defeat justice, including paying a woman to pretend it was she rather than Sister Aimee who inhabited the love shack in Carmel.

Mexican bandits who kidnapped Jacob Rosenthal of Long Island kill him when the Mexican authorities refuse to allow his family to pay the 20,000 peso (c.$10,000) ransom and send soldiers in not-very-good disguise to the drop-off point.

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Today -100: September 16, 1926: I’ve just been strutting myself

Coolidge bans arms exports to Nicaragua. This is aimed at the rebels rather than the government. 

Sen. Rice Means loses the Colorado Republican primary for re-election, another sign of the declining influence of the Ku Klux Klan. 

The 3rd Ku Klux Klan convocation authorizes Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans to stay in hotel bridal suites during his travels. And they’re giving him a yacht. He will adopt a standard of living commensurate with the “dignity of the Klan.” “Boys,” the Imperial Dentist announces, “I’ve just been strutting myself. I’m going to leave it to you whether I shall continue to do so.”

In Canadian federal elections, the Liberal Party comes slightly short of a majority. Mackenzie King will probably be able to stitch something together allowing him to continue as prime minister.

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Today -100: September 15, 1926: Everyone is at work and Mussolini works harder than anybody else

The Locarno treaties come into effect, triggered by Germany’s entry into the League of Nations. 

After all those constant denials that nobody really believed, Al Smith will run for re-election as governor of New York after hall because his health has improved – he’s had a mole removed from his back.

4,353,605 Spaniards vote in favor of the plebiscite for continued dictatorship (and 0 against, that not being an option on the ballot). That’s 13% of the electorate, which the regime considers a rousing success.

US ambassador to Italy Henry Fletcher congratulates Mussolini on surviving the latest assassination attempt, and effusively praises The Duck and the progress Italy has made under Fascism: “Everyone is at work and Mussolini works harder than anybody else.” Mussolini is giving the Italian people a new spirit and a new patriotism.

KKK Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans says that if any European nation invades Mexico (no, no one is really suggesting that will happen), “there are enough Klansmen in America to repel them.”

Headline of the Day -100:

Same.

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Today -100: September 14, 1926: Of parades, strikes, more strikes, and milk wars

The Ku Klux Klan parade in D.C. is much smaller than last year’s, 15,000 to 20,000 this time around.

The British coal strike is still going on. Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill can’t get mine owners to negotiate.

Oh that’s cute: the Spanish plebiscite is taking place on the third anniversary of Primo de Rivera’s coup.

Supposedly thinking they were enforcing a temporary injunction against the NYC garment workers’ strike, police arrest 480 strikers. But the injunction only applied to 3 union officials, not the strikers as a whole.

In other New York labor news, there is a “Bronx milk war.”

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Today -100: September 13, 1926: Much more to be desired is that the experiment be worked out in peace and cool judgment

Mussolini says if the bomb had actually gone into his car instead of bouncing off it, he would simply have picked it up and thrown it back at the assassin. Sounds exactly like something Trump would say.

A NYT editorial on the assassination attempt says “While the special perils of a Dictator cannot be ignored, no thoughtful person desires to see that form of tyranny tempered by assassination. Much more to be desired is that the experiment be worked out in peace and cool judgment.” Jesus fucking Christ.

Name of the Day -100:

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Today -100: September 12, 1926: I truly love to live in danger

An anarchist, Gino Lucetti, throws a bomb at Benito Mussolini’s car. It bounces off, injuring some bystanders when it explodes. Lucetti tries to escape, throws another bomb, which fails to go off, at the cops trying to arrest him. They have to protect him from an angry mob. Lucetti has been living in Marseilles, where he fled last year after getting in a shoot-out with a Fascist. He snuck back into Italy on a rowboat. He will be sentenced to 30 years, will escape or be released in 1943, and soon die in a German bombing raid.

Speaking from his office window (the Chigi Palace having an egregious lack of balconies), Mussolini tells a crowd, “Excessive and culpable tolerance of plotters beyond our frontiers cannot any longer be endured.” He’s talking about France, which hosts not only refugees from Fascist Italy but anti-Fascist newspapers. He says, “As I have abolished strikes, I intend absolutely to stop periodical attempts against my life. I say this not on account of myself, because I truly love to live in danger, but on account of the Italian people, who work and produce and have a right not to be disturbed by such recurrent happenings.” He suggests he will bring back hanging. (Update: another article has The Duck saying, “From this balcony...” but I’ve looked at a bunch of pictures of the Palace and I maintain there aren’t any, if you’re wondering what I’ve been doing with my time today).

A bomb blows up a car in the “Little Italy” neighborhood of Harlem, killing at least one person in the car and severely wounding two more. This may be related to a Fascist street meeting held on the same corner a bit earlier, although the fire department claims the car’s gas tank probably exploded. No one believes them. The bomb may have belonged to the car’s occupants. (Update from tomorrow -100’s paper: one more dies and the two dead are both in Fascist organizations, so yeah they definitely planned to throw the bomb, which the police and fire dept still refuse to acknowledge was the cause of the explosion, at the ANTI-Fascist meeting in retaliation for the assassination attempt on Mussolini).

Spain quits the League of Nations (well, gives the required two-year notice).

Spaniards are voting on the thing that isn’t a proper plebiscite because there’s no option to vote against dictatorship (also, the government will know that the people who do not vote oppose it). King Alfonso is believed to oppose Primo de Rivera’s regime, going so far (hah!) as to appoint Gen. Dámaso Berenguer (the future “soft dictator”) to the royal household; Primo de Rivera said that rather than shake Berenguer’s hand he’d prefer to run him through with a sword, which is also my usual Yelp review.

Staten Island concludes the celebration of its sesquicentennial, which is pretty fancy language for an outer borough.

Frisian regions of the Netherlands are insisting on the use of the Frisian language in schools.

In other news, there is a “Frisian” language.

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Today -100: September 11, 1926: Of pirate radio, militaries, women’s suffrage, and nudists. German nudists, like you hadn’t already guessed that.

Mexican Pres. Plutarco Elías Calles is attacked on a pirate radio station, whose transmitter the police have been unable to locate. Is this the first time such a thing has happened?

The French government reduces military spending, retiring 3,900 officers (leaving 128,000), raising the age of conscription from 20 to 21, and firing 7,000 military horses and... we’re all thinking it.

Spain’s plebiscite will entail the first use by women of their new right to vote. So women can now vote for dictatorship. Yay?

Prussia’s interior minister approves “cultural nudists” frolicking in public in woods and by lakes, provided view of them is screened off by shrubs or whatever.

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Today -100: September 10, 1926: Of ministers plenipotentiary, demons, and fish

The USSR names a woman, Alexandra Kollontai, as minister plenipotentiary to Mexico.

Headline of the Day -100:

Not actual demons, sadly, but a Lt. Demons, chief officer of the French ship Lotus, which collided with and sank a Turkish coal ship, killing 8 Turkish sailors. It then docked in Constantinople, where he was arrested.  (Update: his real name is Desmons)

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: September 9, 1926: Willkommen

Former Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty and former Alien Property Custodian Thomas Miller are on trial for taking bribes for selling off German securities seized during the war to a Swiss company in 1921.

The League of Nations Assembly votes unanimously to admit Germany. German monarchists mock the whole thing, devalued as it is by Poland being simultaneously elected to the League Council.

Spain’s King Alfonso withdraws his martial law decree 3 days after issuing it. His appeal to artillerist rebels was obeyed when dictator Primo de Rivera’s was ignored.

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Today -100: September 8, 1926: Of berets, true lovers of liberty, valets, and smoking

Front-Page Headline of the Day -100:

Spain, pissed at the League of Nations decision tomorrow to let Germany join with a permanent seat on the Council while Spain only gets a non-permanent one, decides to quit the League. Why, we’re the mother country of 20 Spanish-speaking nations! they say.

The bishops of Mexico issue a pastoral letter calling on Mexican Catholics to “Imitate the true lovers of liberty who have known how to stand in the breach until they died or won.” Like early Christians, they’re holding religious services in catacombs or something, blah blah blah, sorry, got bored.

Texas Attorney Gen. Dan Moody wants all Ku Klux Klan members in government to resign when he becomes governor.

Major Arthur Brooks, valet to the last four presidents, dies at 66. A black man, of course. Going in and out of consciousness, he summoned someone from the White House to give them the combination of the White House silver vaults.

Former Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany is taking flying lessons. He does some loops and shit over Berlin’s Tempelhofer airfield, evidently smoking the whole time (the princeling, not the plane), for which he gets told off by a cop.

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Today -100: September 7, 1926: Of nervous conditions, kidnap plots, notaries, sleep, and polar bears

The train with Rudolph Valentino’s body arrives in L.A. The late Mr. Valentino is taken off the train in a suburban station to prevent more mob scenes. Also Rudolph’s brother and Pola Negri, who “appeared to be in an extremely nervous condition.”

Spain claims to have foiled a republican plot to kidnap King Alfonso to force him to abdicate.

Headline of the Day -100:

This is literally true. The city borrowed from US banks to develop electrical works. The banks then insisted Burgomaster Karl Rothe sign each one of 7,000 notes before a notary either in New York City or in Leipzig. Sending Rothe to NY turns out to be cheaper than sending a notary to Leipzig, presumably because they’re sending him steerage class.

Irenee du Pont, vice chairman of the Board of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co. thinks it is possible to create a chemical substitute for sleep.

Headline of the Day -100:

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