Thursday, August 04, 2016

Today -100: August 4, 1916: Of hangings, progressives, busts, and zeppelins


Roger Casement’s last words: I die for my country. Not very original. He converted to Catholicism in prison. The government is now claiming to have evidence, which conveniently came too late to be introduced at Casement’s trial, that he had arranged with Germany to use the Irish POWs he recruited against the British Army in Egypt.

Progressive Party leaders meet and decide not to recall their convention to name a new presidential candidate to replace Roosevelt, who declined the nomination of the last one. Instead they’ll, if I understand this correctly, run John Parker for vice president in 9 states with no presidential candidate in the hopes that he’ll get enough electoral votes to have leverage if the election is really close. The conference decides against expelling the party National Committee members who have endorsed Charles Evans Hughes.

Austrians (and Hungarians) are not pleased by the appointment by Germany of Paul von Hindenburg as commander of the eastern front. He sets to work replacing Austrian generals with German ones.

The German occupation authority in Belgium fines a Brussels committee which put on a sculpture exhibit at which spectators so objected to a bust of Kaiser Wilhelm that it had to be removed.

Zeppelins returning from bombing England now routinely violate the airspace of neutral Netherlands, which is not happy about it.


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