Today -100: October 20, 1925: Wherein is revealed whose head Alfred E. Smith would bite off and what no man in possession of his proper senses would ever do

Treasury Sec. Andrew Mellon proposes lowering the maximum income tax, reducing taxes at every income level, eliminating federal inheritance tax, and passing a constitutional amendment eliminating tax-free securities. He wants to kill federal taxes on trucks but not on passenger cars.

New York Gov. Al Smith says he’s definitely, final answer, not running for re-election. “I’ll bite the head off the first leader who tries to tell me I’ve got to run for governor.” As for president in 1928, well, he’s willing to be drafted – “No man in possession of his proper senses would ever turn down the nomination for president” – but he certainly won’t be campaigning for it or indeed even announcing his candidacy.

British Brig. Gen. John Charteris, a Tory MP who was Army Chief of Intelligence during the Great War, admits, at a National Arts Club dinner of all places, that he’s the one who started the story that Germany was boiling down the bodies of its soldiers for glycerine. He planted it in a Shanghai newspaper to influence the Chinese, then the story spread to British newspapers.

The US Supreme Court overturns Arizona’s minimum wage for women.

Although Italy has in theory held Somaliland as a (cough) protectorate since 1889, it didn’t dare try to occupy the north, possibly put off by the ass-kicking Ethiopia gave it in the ‘90s, but now Mussolini sends in troops.

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