Today -100: February 18, 1910: Of colds, warpaths, primaries, and lynchings

Kaiser Wilhelm is sick! Okay, it’s not much of a story, but the NYT took advantage to sneak in a little alliteration in its headline: “Kaiser Confined by a Cold.”

However, the Headline of the Day -100 would have to be “Mad Mullah on Warpath.”

Illinois enacts direct primaries (as opposed to nominating conventions). Three previous attempts since the 1890s were struck down by the courts.

In Cairo, Illinois, the site of two lynchings in November 1909, there were shots exchanged between sheriff’s deputies and a mob trying to lynch a negro accused of... purse snatching. At the time the story was filed, the mob was threatening to lynch the deputies as well.