Today -100: December 7, 1918: Of crowns, reparations, tied-up men, apoplexy, and straight dickermans

German/Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm finally renounces his crowns. Prussia withdraws the Hohenzollerns’ immunity from the law.

Britain will present Germany with a bill for £8 billion in reparations. France is still doing the math on its bill.

In the German state of Brunswick, the president is evidently a clothes-mender, the vice president a professional juggler, and the education minister a semi-literate woman.

Headline of the Day -100: 

As punishment, not for fetishistic sex – at least that was the story they were going with. Secretary of War Newton Baker says this type of punishment used to be useful in “breaking” prisoners of “the usual military type,” but now there are stronger-willed political prisoners (I assume he means conscientious objectors) and punishments against them have... escalated.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Because if there’s anyone whose cause of death will be “apoplexy,” it’s a prominent lawyer named Luther Laflin Kellogg, while playing golf.

Also in the obits, I was trying to decide if there was anything funny about Major Straight. Reading further, I see his full name is Willard Dickerman Straight. So no, nothing funny about that name, not at all.

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