Today -100: May 24, 1919: A hybrid between a French Revolution and an oriental despotism

Hawker & Grieve’s plane is still missing.

The California Legislature votes to turn the Los Angeles Normal School into the second branch of the University of California (Berkeley’s the first). It will open in downtown in the next academic year, later moving to Westwood (chosen over the Palos Verdes Peninsula, which later got a Trump golf course as consolation prize).

Prohibition is due to begin July 1st. Not the prohibition mandated by the 18th Amendment, the wartime one enacted for wartime agricultural needs when they thought the war would still be going on in 1919. But a federal judge grants an injunction against the ban including beer under 2.75% alcohol, which the brewers claim is not intoxicating. The government says it is.

The Allies respond to German complaints about the peace terms, saying everybody has it bad so why should you get off lightly, especially since the war was all your fault.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The debate is on a resolution demanding the State Dept release the full text of the treaty. Hiram Johnson (R-Cal.) thinks they’re trying to conceal something. Gilbert Hitchcock (D-Neb.) points out that the treaty is still being negotiated and hasn’t been signed yet. Lawrence Sherman (R-Ill.) says the League would reduce the US to a vassal state and accuses Wilson’s administration of being full of socialists and being “a hybrid between a French Revolution and an oriental despotism. History would forget the reign of Caligula in the excesses and follies of the American Government operated under the League of Nations interpreted by President Wilson and Colonel House.”


For the first time, at least in the US, a dirigible lands on a rooftop, in Cleveland. Only takes seven tries.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Mexican state, not a dog. Probably.

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