Today -100: March 9, 1916: How do you spell ball?

Reports/rumors that Pancho Villa’s men killed two American Mormons in Chihuahua State.

The NY State Senate Judiciary Committee postpones reporting out on a women’s suffrage bill, evidently to punish suffragists for bursting into the committee room because they needed to get back to NYC for a women’s suffrage ball. One senator, sadly unnamed, asked, “How do you spell ball – b-a-w-l?”  “Then, it is said, Mrs. Whitehouse spoke, and with much directness.”

Icky Tale of Derring-Do of the Day -100:

The presidential commission on the Colorado coal strike/Ludlow Massacre reports. It says the lopsidedness of Colorado “justice” – 400 indictments on strikers and none on company gunmen – has left a “festering sore” on public opinion. 

In Toronto, Canadian soldiers back from the front attack a prohibition parade.

The New Jersey Assembly appropriates $150,000 for military training in high schools – boys will be trained in shooting and camp life, girls in nursing.

Harvard may ban men in theatrical productions such as the Hasty Pudding Theatricals from dressing as women. Yale has already done so because of fears that “feminine rôles in amateur theatricals tends to effeminacy.” Neither Harvard nor Yale have female students – just saying.

Non-Clown Death of the Day -100: the alliterative Loran Ludowick Lewis, former NY State Supreme Court Justice and court-appointed lawyer for McKinley assassin Leon Czolgosz (who refused to cooperate with him).

More Proof That Life In the 1910s Was Exactly As Depicted In Silent Movies: Frank Oakley commits suicide – asphyxiation by gas – after he is informed by the superintendent of the Bedford Reformatory that Viola Stoll, who has been incarcerated there for the last 2½ years for stealing his ex-wife’s jewels (she said they were a present), would not marry him, even for early parole. Did I mention that Oakley was better known as Slivers the Clown, a star of Barnum & Bailey? Ran away to the circus, became B&B’s highest-paid clown at $1,000 a week. He did a one-man baseball game routine, which admirer Buster Keaton imitated in The Cameraman (1928). Also, something with giant lobsters.

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