Today -100: February 5, 1924: Of funerals, Labour lords, and married students

Woodrow Wilson’s funeral will not be a state funeral, because he liked to think of himself as a humble man of the people, which he wasn’t, and he asked for a private funeral. Coolidge & Taft (the only living ex-president) get to go (Taft will be too ill to attend). He’ll be buried at the Chapel of Peter & Paul in D.C., still the only president buried in Washington. Former First Lady Edith Wilson will live another 38 years. Coolidge planned to close government offices on the day of the funeral, but there’s an 1893 law banning that for former officials. (A workaround will be found, Coolidge directing that no work is required in government depts after 12:30 pm that day).

Wilson had planned to present the Democratic Convention with the gift of his declaration of the principles the party ought to follow.

Austria recognizes the Soviet Union and Italy will soon. It just took the British Labour win to open the floodgates.

The British release Gandhi from prison, less than 2 years into his 6-year sentence for sedition, on health grounds.

Three members of the Labour government are elevated to the House of Lords, the first Labourites to be so.... honored? This is down to a law that there has to be at least one Cabinet member and one under-secretary in the Lords. They are Sydney Olivier, Secretary of State for India, Brig. Gen. C.B. Thomson, Secretary of State for Air, and Sydney Arnold, colonial under-sec.

Less than a month after returning to Greece to save it from civil war, Eleftherios Venizelos resigns as prime minister, along with his Cabinet, because he’s too sick to continue.

Outgoing Honduran president López Gutiérrez has decided not to go out (his term expired last week but Congress deadlocked in choosing a successor) and to name himself dictator, as is the custom. Gen. Tuburcio Carias rebels and names himself president, as is the custom. The US has informed Gutiérrez that it won’t accept his continuing in office.

Syracuse University expels a sophomore, Herbert Porter, for breaking the rule against students marrying.

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