Saturday, February 09, 2013

Today -100: February 9, 1913: Of face-painting, war balloons, thomases, lynchings, plants, and Smoot machines


The latest Paris fashion: face-painting. Mauve, terra-cotta, etc, to match one’s dress. Evening functions only. The article speculates that women are trying to look like “the hideous female types conjured up by the diseased imaginations” of Futurist and Cubist artists.

Headline of the Day -100: “Airship Startles Primitive African Cave Dwellers.” An Italian “war balloon” flying over Libya.

The NYT has a scoop: Woodrow Wilson’s first name is actually Thomas.

In Houston, Mississippi, a negro is lynched, burned to death, for the murder of a white woman. This is actually the second lynching in the case, one day after a mob hanged an innocent – but equally black – man. This time they brought a court stenographer and carefully “questioned” the man before putting him on the pyre.

Theodore Roosevelt comes out in support of the Bulgarians against the Turks.

British suffragettes attack Kew Gardens, breaking greenhouse panes. Many rare plants bravely lose their lives.

Discussing how the Mormon Church is scrambling to form connections with the Democrats after strongly backing Taft in the election (for example, Utah’s DNC member William R. Wallace just converted from Mormonism to Woodrow Wilson’s Presbyterian Church), the NYT refers to a “Mrs. Susan Young Gates, who is known as ‘the feminine end of the Smoot machine’”. I’ll bet she is, I’ll bet she is.

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4 comments:

  1. RE Headline of the day; and more than half a century later the poor primitive Africans were still being harassed by flying machines swooping over their caves, in this case jet bombers. In the days before Qaddafi (mid 60s) the RAF had a bombing range south of Tripoli and and the caves were at the start of the bombing run. I waved to the "poor primitive troglodytes" many times.

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  2. Did they wave back?

    Still, it's better than the nuclear tests the French held in the Sahara in its former North African colony of Algeria.

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  3. On the other hand, they might have been shaking their fists...

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