Today -100: October 5, 1918: The only way to make a Hun feel friendly is to knock him out

The T.A. Gillespie Co.’s shell-loading plant in Morgan, N.J. blows up. It is (or was before it, you know, blew up) the largest such plant, loading 32,000 shells per day. Enough ammunition is destroyed to supply the Western Front for 6 months. More than 100 people are killed. There would have been more, but the first explosion was small and the workers on the night shift were mostly able to get out.

Bulgarian King Ferdinand abdicates, 2 days shy of 10 years in power – doesn’t even get a cake in the shape of Bulgaria – in favor of his eldest son, now Boris III.

The new German cabinet of Prince Max will include Philipp Scheidemann, the first Socialist (SPD) in a German government, and Adolf Gröber and Matthias Erzberger of the Catholic Zentrum (Center) party, all as ministers without portfolio. The idea is that a government unencumbered by the militarist and pan-German policies of the past will be acceptable to the Allies as an interlocutor for peace talks.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Theodore Roosevelt tells an audience which came to see him at a Nebraska railroad station, “The only way to make a Hun feel friendly is to knock him out. ... Put this war through right, so that no other nation will look cross-eyed at us.”

NYC Health Commissioner Royal Copeland orders stores to open at 8 am and close at 4 pm, offices 8:30 to 4:30, textile factories 9-5. He isn’t closing theatres and cinemas, but orders their hours staggered. All this to prevent over-crowding on public transport, which he considers the chief danger. “We believe it is proper to keep the theatres and churches open if we can eliminate the sneezers, coughers, and spitters.” Ushers should remove those gross people by “force if necessary.” And he won’t close the schools because “in some homes there is careless disregard of modern sanitation” but children from those homes are washed and their teeth brushed before they’re sent to school, where they can be inspected.

In January the War Dept banned people in military service being paid for writing (and for writing for publication even unpaid, I think?). They have now rescinded  this.

Headline of the Day -100:  

A letter from a G.C. Hall of Montgomery, Alabama takes issue with Pres. Wilson’s assertion that the Susan B. Anthony Amendment is a war matter. If proving our democracy is so important, why not abolish the Electoral College? And if it’s so important, why not just proclaim it by executive edict? Continuing, Hall writes,

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