Saturday, May 31, 2014

Today -100: May 31, 1914: Of surrenders, tango foot, black princes, paines, immigrants, and disgusted Germans


Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Surrender of Wilson.” Woodrow Wilson gives a Memorial Day speech at Arlington Cemetery. He had turned down an invitation from the Grand Army of the Republic but came under criticism from GAR posts, especially when it was learned that he’d be unveiling a monument in Arlington to the Confederate dead next week. He receives a lukewarm reception. Only 126 Union soldiers from the Civil War made it.

American warships mark their territory Memorial Day in Vera Cruz, each ship firing 48 guns (that’s 1,152 all together), to which the French, German, British and Spanish warships respond in kind. How joyous the Mexicans must have found this!

A German doctor asserts the existence of a malady he calls “tango foot,” an affliction of the leg muscles caused by excessive dancing of the tango.

Headline of the Day -100: “Black Prince To Visit Us.” Prince Joseph Wolugembe of Uganda. And if you didn’t catch the subtle reference, he’s a gentleman of the negro persuasion.

Headline of the Day -100 (New York Times Sunday Magazine): “Paine’s Long Lost Remains Home By Parcel Post.” Actually just some hair and a wax cast of his face. The rest of Tom Paine... kind of went missing. It’s a long story.

Queen Mary’s servants are on strike. She keeps reducing their numbers and expecting them to accomplish the same work. They now have to get up at 5 a.m. instead of 6. When their afternoon break was reduced, they refused to work during that period.

The Jewish Immigrants’ Information Bureau will stop trying to redirect Jewish immigrants from New York City to Galveston. The problem was that Jewish immigrants didn’t want to go to Galveston and the immigration officials in Galveston were especially hostile to Jewish immigrants.

Headline of the Day -100: “Albania’s Ruler Disgusts Germans.” By his cowardice during the recent disturbances. Although I seem to remember reading just yesterday that Kaiser Wilhelm is afraid of elevators.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

No comments:

Post a Comment