Today -100: May 16, 1925: All this does not change the poetry of life

Gen. Nelson Appleton Miles, who joined the army during the Civil War, becoming a general at 25, and later killed him some Injuns and some Pullman railroad strikers, and was military governor of Puerto Rico and commanding general of the US Army, dies at 85 in a manner befitting his life: dropping dead at Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus. In 1904 he refused the Prohibition Party nomination for president; it instead went to (ahem) Silas Swallow. He was wounded several times in the Civil War. 36 years after a Confederate sharp-shooter shot him in the belt buckle, they met and the soldier said that all things considered he was glad he hadn’t killed Miles.

Mussolini succeeds in convincing Parliament to give women the vote. Well, the vote in municipal elections anyway. Ironically, it’s an exercise in macho dominance because most Fascists deputies do not like the idea at all, but fall in line anyway. The Duck says “I have never met a woman who asked me for the vote.” He says in this, the “century of capitalism,” women are obliged to work. “However, all this does not change the poetry of life.” Not the limericks, anyway. Oddly, he says he’s actually “pessimistic” about the value of women’s suffrage: “I know it will not bring a cataclysm, but I do not believe it will bring much good, or, in fact, change matters much.” He also says that in his forthcoming mobilization orders, women will be conscripted during wartime.

Pres. Coolidge rejects the Anti-Saloon League’s suggestion that he use the Navy to enforce Prohibition.

After school board elections in Elmsford, Westchester County, New York, school principal Howard Lee Holden is forced out because of his habit of beating pupils with a rubber hose.

The late Anatole France had a very light brain.

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