Today -100: July 8, 1922: Of indices, ectoplasm, immigrants, and breaches of promises

The Vatican puts all of Anatole France’s works on the Index.

Experiments at the Sorbonne, conducted with three actual Sorbonne professors and a medium Eva (they may mean spirit guide), fail to detect ectoplasm during seances.

The start of the immigrant-quota year on July 1st saw a race of ships from Europe, as last year. The annual Greek quota has already been filled. Indeed, of the 165 arriving on the Acropolis, only 60 will be admitted. This is a monumentally stupid system.

Conservatives do well in the elections for the Dutch upper house, the first in which women can vote. 7 women are elected (no, I don’t know of how many who ran, or how many seats there are, and don’t feel like looking it up). The paper says the majority of women didn’t vote the same way as their husbands – how do they know that? is there no secret ballot?

Cathal Brugha (aka Charles Burgess), the Irish minister for defence from 1919 until January 1922, who commanded rebel forces in O’Connell Street, is killed whilst failing to surrender.

Mary Sterner wins $250 in a breach of promise suit against actor John Pauls. 6 years after they met, he said he’d marry her in Vienna. She sailed, he didn’t, and when she came back she found that he’d married someone else. Which led me to wonder when breach of promise suits stopped being a thing in law. Evidently they’re still a thing in half the states and do occasionally wind up in court (I think mostly to recover costs of weddings that didn’t happen).

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