Today -100: October 13, 1921: A man would need to be an optimist to hold up the British Empire

Sen. Philander Knox, former attorney general under McKinley and Roosevelt and secretary of state under Taft, dies of apoplexy, as was the custom.

William Simmons, founder and imperial hood-meister of the modern Klan, defends his organization before a House committee. He says there is no room in the Klan for those who take the law into their own hands and “We have been charged with everything from the wave of high prices to the sweeping march of the boll weevil.”

Detroit bans a planned KKK Thanksgiving Day parade.

The German government threatens to resign if the League of Nations decision on Upper Silesia is, as rumor has it, to divide it between Poland and Germany.

The British and Irish delegations to the Ireland conference both bring lists of breaches of the truce by the other side. In an interview Michael Collins says he’s an optimist; “A man would need to be an optimist to hold up the British Empire.”

Margaret Sanger plans to open birth control clinics in Southern states which haven’t gotten around to making them illegal.

Dr. E. Stillman Bailey proselytizes for the beneficial effects of radium. Why, radium miners in Colorado were immune to the Spanish Flu and never get gout. He likes to give radium tablets to his patients, especially old people, and swears by the results. If you’re wondering what Bailey eventually died of: apoplexy. It was the custom.

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