Today -100: January 28, 1922: Of gas, phoning girls, ghost banjos, and Nelly Bly

In Nevada, Gee Jon and Hughie Sing are sentenced to death for the murder of Tom Kee, an old guy from a rival tong (yes, Gee killed Kee). They are the first people ever sentenced to die by lethal gas. I’d have said sentenced to die in the gas chamber, but Nevada doesn’t have one. The state prison plans to put them in a cell for several days, then randomly choose a day to gas them in their sleep. Spoiler Alert: this will not work.

Headline of the Day -100:  

I’ll bet he does.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Journalist Nelly Bly (real name Elly Cochran) dies at 57. She went undercover in a lunatic asylum to expose abuses in 1887, then followed up by beating Jules Verne’s fictitious Around the World in Eighty Days journey, doing it in 72 days. She spent a few years writing novels, then married a much older businessman and ran his steel-container business (into the ground). She returned to journalism as a war reporter during the Great War.

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