Today -100: January 31, 1926: Liberté, égalité, funké

American dancer/choreographer/etc Harry Pilcer introduces a jazzy syncopated version of the Marseillaise in a Paris music hall. Rioting ensues. The Prefect orders that henceforth no one fuck with the Marseillaise.

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Today -100: January 30, 1926: No Civil War emotions

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Gasparri denies that there are ongoing discussions for an understanding, “Concordat,” as it will be called, between the Vatican and Italy. Throughout the interview Gasparri never utters the name “Mussolini,” referring to him only as “he.” The cardinal praises “him” for putting the crucifix back in public schools and restoring teaching of the catechism, exempting priests from military service, and banning the Freemasons.

Earlier this month, John Wesley Langley (R-Kentucky) resigned from Congress after being convicted of Prohibition law violations and sent to prison. His wife Katherine has now failed to gain the Republican nomination to serve the remainder of her husband’s term, defeated by Andrew Kirk. She says she’ll run again in the August primary, in which (spoiler alert) she’ll beat Kirk and then win the general election and serve two terms before losing the 1930 election.

The House of Representatives suspends in order to honor Rep. Charles Manly Stedman (D-North Carolina) on his 85th birthday. He is the last remaining Confederate vet in Congress. Dunno if there are any Union vets. The NYT will opine that “Americans of a later generation have no Civil War emotions, much less resentments.”

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Today -100: January 29, 1926: Of collar bones and hip wiggles

The Prince of Wales falls off a horse, as was the custom. “I know what has happened. I’ve broken my collar bone,” the royal moron says.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: January 28, 1926: A gift certificate would have sufficed, maybe some socks

Communists in Berlin celebrate former kaiser Wilhelm’s 67th birthday by hanging him in effigy.

The Senate votes 76-17 to join the World Court... with certain reservations, including no legal relationship to the League of Nations, withdrawal at any time, etc etc.

The Prince of Wales falls off a horse, as is the custom.

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Today -100: January 27, 1926: Of wolves, disturbances of popular referenda, and salutes

Moscow is supposedly having a problem with roaming wolf packs. And rabies.

The death sentence for William Cavalier, who was 14 when convicted of murdering his grandmother and is now 16, is commuted to life imprisonment by the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons.

German Chancellor Hans Luther outlines his policies to the Reichstag, after which there is some hissing on the right and left and zero applause. Doesn’t bode well. There are objections to the government’s negotiations on entering the League of Nations and to his rejection of what he calls “the disturbance of a popular referendum” on expropriating the former royal families.

Italy is requiring all railroad employees who give salutes between chiefs and subordinates must utilize the Roman salute, I guess even non-Italians working on trains traveling through Italy.

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Today -100: January 26, 1926: Of SOS’s, jazz, and doctors in drag

They keep trying to run international radio tests, keeping radio stations off the air during the tests, but twice now the tests have been screwed up by ships broadcasting SOS’s.

Rep. William Vaile (R-Colorado) introduces a bill to retaliate against foreign countries (i.e., Britain & France) that ban or restrict US jazz musicians by refusing them visas.

M.V. Mayfield, a doctor practicing in Mena, Arkansas for the last decade, is discovered during an illness to be a woman. She will later say that after she was born in Britain, her parents dressed her as a boy to protect property rights, and she just kept on. She’s 74? 78? The M.V. stood for Mary Victoria but she went by Victor. She will die in 1929 and be buried in male clothes. Evidently she was the inspiration for the 1933 German film “Viktor und Viktoria,” which Blake Edwards remade in 1982 with Julie Andrews in the title, um, roles.

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Today -100: January 25, 1926: Honestly Mussolini IS a fucking ulcer

Mussolini has an ulcer! Oh noes!

The German Socialist and Communist parties are pushing for a referendum on expropriating the property of former royal families without compensation. Centrist parties are undecided.

In an editorial entitled “Dictator-Worship,” the NYT says “It is not that Americans desire or expect a dictatorship in this country, but some of them are expressing a good deal of satisfaction with the way in which it operates in other lands. ... this does not imply an abandonment of our belief in free institutions. More than anything else, it seems to be an instinctive admiration for success. Dictators are doing wonderful things, therefore they are to be applauded.” But the Times thinks dictators also do harm, especially in foreign relations, and while dictatorships are theoretically temporary (are they? someone ask Mussolini), the dictators decide for themselves when they have accomplished their aims.

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Today -100: January 24, 1926: Poisoned mushrooms of lascivious shape and noxious odor are the worst kind of mushrooms

Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier, the archbishop of Malines (Mechelen), Belgium, dies at 74. His open resistance to German occupation of Belgium during the Great War, including issuing a pastoral letter saying no obedience was owed to the occupiers, made him an important national symbol.

The British plan to force Maharajah Tukoji Rao Holkar III of Indore, an Indian princely state, to abdicate (this will happen next month). Last year Mumtaz Begum, who will be repeatedly called a “dancing girl,” escaped from his harem, blaming a nurse for the death of her female baby. She was taken in by a Muslim Bombay textile merchant. The maharajah sent men all the way to Bombay to take her back; they killed the merchant and injured her, but were fought off by... British officers with golf clubs? Really? One of the would-be kidnappers was captured and several put on trial, including an Indore general whose defense attorney was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the future first president of Pakistan. Tukoji will marry an American woman and mostly live in exile in France, dying in 1978 at 87. Begum will attempt an acting career in the US; it’s unclear what happened with her.

New York cops, including the bomb squad, guard a performance of Carlo Tresca’s play “L’Attentato [Attack/Assassination] a Mussolini,” which makes fun of The Duck. Tresca, a leftie who made all the right enemies, was convicted in the US in 1923, supposedly at the request of the Fascist government, for printing an ad for birth control in his newspaper, but had his sentence commuted by Coolidge. He’ll be assassinated in NYC by the Mafia, or possibly the NKVD – as I said, all the right enemies – in 1943.

A couple of religious fanatics from a Bordeaux, France sect called Our Lady of Tears, are on trial for attacking the Abbé Desnoyers, the village priest of Bombon, 600 km from Bordeaux, with sticks and staves because of sorcery. There were 10 women and 2 men in the mob but only the men are on trial. Evidently the priest ensorceled some migrating birds, as one does, which then flew over Bordeaux where they caused the growth of “poisoned mushrooms of lascivious shape and noxious odor, which gave the residents on the banks of the Gironde shameful diseases in various forms,” so clearly he had it coming.

A lost Polish colony is discovered by a roaming Polish anthropologist in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil. It hadn’t been heard from since 1873. The original settlers are all dead; their descendants still speak Polish. I couldn’t discover what happened to them.

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Today -100: January 23, 1926: Is it any wonder that banditry, murder, bribery and corruption flourish?

New US Attorney General John G. Sargent tells a New York State Bar Association meeting that violating Prohibition law is a gateway drug, as it were, to the breaking of other laws. People who insist on their right to have a drink are “bribing” bootleggers to risk breaking the law, but what is to stop those bootleggers deciding there’s more money in robbing their customers, possibly with lethal force? “Is it any wonder that banditry, murder, bribery and corruption flourish?”

John Logie Baird has perfected television (aka televisor). It’s pretty blurry, but it does include sound.

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Today -100: January 22, 1926: Of filibusters and the Prince of Wales NOT falling off horses

The US Senate opponents of the World Court finally admit that that thing they’re doing is a filibuster, indeed, as John Harreld (R-OK) puts it, “a filibuster to prevent immature action.”

The Ku Klux Klan is running a pressure campaign against the World Court. Who knew kluxers could even write letters?

Man Bites Dog: 

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Today -100: January 21, 1926: I just assume there’s a German compound noun for that

The US and Mexico are having a dispute over what Mexico’s oil & land laws actually mean. Mexico denies the US accusation that they are retroactive, confiscatory and discriminate against US citizens. US SecState Frank Kellogg says they are too.

Bavarian courts acquit a lieutenant & a major who took part in the extra-judicial executions of 12 radicals near Munich in 1919. The judge insists that the Red revolution™ had to be put down, so the soldiers were suffering nervous strain from all that Red-revolution-putting-down, and this is evidently extenuating for murdering prisoners.

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Today -100: January 20, 1926: Of diplomatic relations & ministerial crises

Switzerland is working on restoring diplomatic relations with Russia. This is important because the big upcoming international disarmament conference will take place in Switzerland, and Russia is still peeved at the assassination in 1923 of Vatslav Vorovsky, Russia’s delegate to the Lausanne Conference, and the subsequent acquittal of his killers; it’s been boycotting Switzerland ever since. Russia is demanding a pension from Switzerland for Vorovsky’s daughter Nina, who is 17 or so.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: January 19, 1926: The ultimate end

Alfredo Rocco, Mussolini’s minister of justice, admits in an interview that the Duck’s attempts to bring the Aventine opposition deputies to heel is part of his efforts to abolish individualism. “We contend that society, and therefore the state, is the ultimate end and that the individual is only a means to achieve the noble purpose of the state.” “Only” is doing a lot of work there. “As a result we feel completely justified in suppressing those who would retard the progress of the state”.

France claims to have discovered, and may have actually discovered, secret German airplane factories in Sweden and Switzerland with German engineers and skilled workers.

Real-estate developer Oscar Konkle starts construction of the “Christian-Missionary Building” on Broadway & 122nd Street, which at 66 stories would be the world’s tallest building, 8 feet higher than the Woolworth Building. He’s building it in gratitude for the recovery of his son, who will be a missionary (Oscar is also associated with Billy Sunday), and it will contain a church alongside 4,500 hotel rooms renting at up to $21 a week and a hospital on the top floor. Konkle will kick back 10% of the earnings to a missionary base in British East Africa. Drinking, smoking, and Sunday newspapers will be banned from the building.

The project will be abandoned during the Depression and litigation following 5 deaths during the excavation.

Next week International Radio Broadcast Tests will be carried out. They’ve gotten transatlantic and navy ships to refrain from broadcasting during the tests but we’ll see if their appeals to rumrunners to maintain radio-silence are obeyed.

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Today -100: January 18, 1926: Of scandalous tissues of falsehoods and overcoats

New York Republicans hold a conference and agree to accede to much of Gov. Al Smith’s agenda, because they’re afraid that otherwise he’ll run for re-election.

Mussolini says the Aventine deputies, who yesterday attempted to end their boycott of the Chamber of Deputies only to be chased out, will only be allowed to return to their seats if they admit that their accusations against him are “a scandalous tissue of falsehoods,” accept the Fascist revolution as an accomplished fact and abandon all resistance to it, renounce anti-Fascists operating outside of Italy, etc.

The Soviet film agency invites Charlie Chaplin to come and make a film of Gogol’s short story “The Overcoat.”

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Today -100: January 17, 1926: Of road warriors, Anastasias, and traffic lights

For 25 years, John D. Rockefeller has been trying to close a road that goes through his estate in the towns of North Tarrytown and Mount Pleasant in Westchester County, New York. The former now rejects his request, presumably in order to convenience passing headless horsemen (the town is the location of that Washington Irving story and has since changed its name to Sleepy Hollow). At first I thought the milkman fighting Rockefeller needed the road for his milk rounds, but actually his father owned a hotel and some years ago Rockefeller got the road leading to it closed. Revenge against a Rockefeller is the best kind of revenge.

The General Federation of Women’s Clubs asks Coolidge to support an amendment to the Constitution to establish uniform marriage and divorce laws, including preventing “the unfit” from marrying.

The Grand Duchess Olga travels to Germany to inspect a woman who claims to be the lost (i.e., dead) Grand Duchess Anastasia. Olga says the woman (who is in a sanatarium and may have been put up to this) looks nothing like Anastasia and furthermore speaks only German, a language Anastasia did not speak, and with a Bavarian accent no less.

Constantinople gets traffic signals, which are such a novelty that crowds gather to watch them change color, blocking traffic and rather defeating the point.

Bessie Lee Gambrill is named the first woman associate professor at Yale in a field other than nursing. Her field is elementary education. She’ll teach 30 years at Yale and die at 105 in 1988.

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Today -100: January 16, 1926: Coley Blease asks the tough questions

Senate opponents of the US joining the World Court are filibustering the bill, although they’ve kind of run out of arguments. Coleman Blease, standing in for an ill William Borah, resorts to reading out George Washington’s farewell address, interspersed with “extemporaneous comments on evolution and drinking by diplomats in Washington”, with likker (as we’re informed he calls it) causing “these foreigners” to “get drunk and... debauch our women.” Why, he asks, should a “cotton mill boy” be arrested for having a flask when “some little half-nigger from a foreign country” has diplomatic immunity?

Groups of monarchists are roaming the streets of Berlin, defacing police posters which describe Black Reichswehr members wanted for murder.

Turkey adopts a new Civil Code, consisting of the whole of the Swiss Civil Code, which is still being translated. It will abolish polygamy, make divorce more difficult, and eliminate the special protections of Jewish, Greek and Armenian minorities, since Switzerland Swiss minorities are treated equally.

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Today -100: January 15, 1926: Of antis, retirements, and radios

The Women’s National Republican Club elects as its president Alice Chittenden, who used to be president of the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.

NY Gov. Al Smith says he’ll retire from politics when his current term ends in December (he won’t). He says he wants to go into some sort of business where he can employ his three sons. Some people think he really does want to make some money, having previously made the unusual decision to not be corrupt in his political career; others think he’s clearing his schedule to campaign for president in 1928.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: January 14, 1926: Of dirigibles, KKK Inc., and lynchings

An article on the disagreements within the Dept of the Navy has this delightful alliterative sub-hed:

The NY Ku Klux Klan is attempting to go around the Walker Anti-Klan Act, which was upheld by the NY Court of Appeals yesterday, by incorporating, thus relieving itself of the requirement to name its members.

A Coahoma County, Mississippi jury acquits G.O. Cain (!) of murder for his part in the lynching of Lindsey Coleman, who had been acquitted of killing a plantation storekeeper.

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Today -100: January 13, 1926: Of nyes, counterfeits, train robbers, and warm hearts

The Senate votes 41-39 to seat Gerald Nye, who was appointed more than 6 months ago by North Dakota Gov. Arthur Sorlie, who may or may not have had the legal authority to do so (badly written law). Nye is a La Follette Republican, which explains his support from Senate Dems.

Another day, another counterfeiting plot, although this one cleverly rested  not on actually forging Portuguese banknotes but on the simpler task of forging an order to the British company that prints Portugal’s currency. Or possibly not technically forged: signatures on the order may have come from actual government officials who are part of the plot, the aim of which was to acquire so much power in Portugal (they used the money to found banks and buy existing ones) that they could sell its colonies to Germany.

The NY Court of Appeals upholds the law requiring the Ku Klux Klan to file a list of its members, the text of its secret oaths, and its constitution with the state.

The Mexican Army is ruthlessly exterminating the bandits who attacked the Guadalajara-Mexico City train yesterday, including summary executions of bandits captured alive (and their alleged accomplices who were nowhere near the train). After they’ve confessed, of course.

Yesterday Helen Keller met Pres. Coolidge, today she meets First Lady Grace Coolidge, who used to teach deaf-mutes. Regarding Keller’s comment that Cal is not a cold man like everyone says, Grace says he thought only she knew he had a warm heart.

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Today -100: January 12, 1926: A dear president

Helen Keller, whose habit is to visit every president (from Grover Cleveland to LBJ), meets Calvin Coolidge, putting her finger on his lips to hear him (does that actually work?), and I CANNOT find a picture of it. She says, “They say you are cold, but you are not. You are a dear president.”

The Supreme Court refuses to stay the two-year sentence of Rep. John Langley (R-Kentucky) for violating Prohibition laws. Langley resigns from Congress, where he’s (ahem) served since 1907.

70 German reactionaries sign a manifesto calling for the overthrow of the Weimar Republic, including 6 former generals, the odd prince, university profs, Reichstag members, etc.

Bandits attack the Guadalajara-Mexico City train, killing something like 50 passengers and crew, though American and German passengers are unharmed. They insist, not that anyone asks, that they are revolutionists, not bandits. After burning the coaches, they escape on the locomotive.

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Today -100: January 11, 1926: Dispersion of energy

Mussolini says democracy only works in the US because its resources permit luxury & waste, whereas Italy is poor and can’t afford the “dispersion of energy... inherent in a democratic regime.”

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Today -100: January 10, 1926: Of rights, common criminal cases without any political or patriotic features, and the best films of 1925

The US protests Mexico’s new oil and land laws, some bits of which apply retroactively, as violating American “rights.” The threat is that recognition of the Mexican government will be withdrawn.

The Hungarian authorities are pretending that the counterfeiting plot was just a “common criminal case without any political or patriotic features” rather than the means to finance a monarchist coup. But they have stationed cops on every corner, just in case another counterfeiter walks by, presumably.

The NYT gives its list of the top 10 movies shown in NYC in 1925:

The Big Parade

The Last Laugh

The Unholy Three

The Gold Rush

The Merry Widow

The Dark Angel

Don Q., Son of Zorro

Ben-Hur

Stella Dallas

A Kiss for Cinderella

None of which are lost films, so, you know, findable on YouTube, Tubi, etc.

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Today -100: January 9, 1926: A big tree without a shadow

The Manila Municipal Court sentences City Councilman Antonio Paguia to 2 months for insulting Gov. Gen. Leonard Wood by calling him “a big tree without a shadow” and an oppressor and an autocrat and a despoiler of Philippine liberty.  Which is funny cuz it’s true.

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Today -100: January 8, 1926: Away from Judaism, with its Jehovah

Former kaiser Wilhelm writes an article for a book, The Opposition of the Germanic Movement to Judaism and Christianity, urging Germans to “break away from the belief that Jehovah, the God of the Jews, is our God.” Evidently the real forerunner of Christianity is not Judaism but the Aryan religion of Zarathustra. “Our slogan must be ‘Away from Judaism, with its Jehovah,’” he sloganizes. 

A federal judge in Chicago gives a reduced sentence to a saloon owner and a bartender after their lawyer says that their liquor was “of high quality and wholesome content” (i.e., not adulterated). The judge agrees this is a mitigating factor.

Headline of the Day -100:

Vice President Charles Dawes forgets his wife’s birthday.

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Today -100: January 7, 1926: Of worlds court, state of the state messages, marching on Budapest, and B & A

The move to join the World Court progresses as the Senate, by a vote of 54-16, rejects James Reed (D-Missouri)’s resolution calling for investigation of pro-World Court propaganda and propaganda from international bankers to influence Congress in favor of war debt settlements with European countries.

New York Gov. Al Smith presents his program to the Legislature, including: extending the gubernatorial term to 4 years; biennial legislative sessions with state senators serving 4-year terms & assemblycritters 2; an executive (i.e., unified) budget rather than each department’s budget being voted on separately; consolidation of counties, including within New York City; abolishing the Motion Picture Censorship Commission (he calls film censorship a useless activity opposed to freedom & liberty); abolishing the state census; max. 48 hours work for women and minors.

Gyula Gömbös, head of the Hungarian National Independence Party (which the NYT calls Fascisti), is said to be gathering forces to march on Budapest in 2 or 3 days.

George Burns & Gracie Allen marry. Have you seen the short films they made together c.1930? You should.

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Today -100: January 6, 1926: Of killer cops, cells, crowns prince, and sensational trashy periodical literature

Samuel Kranin, a Brooklyn glazier, goes to the police station to report that a patrolman beat him up in his store after he refused his demand for $2. After he picks the cop, John J. Brennan, out of a lineup, Brennan shoots him dead. The police surgeon says Brennan is drunk.

Hungarian authorities make many arrests in a conspiracy of fascist types, anti-Semites & royalists, including the chief of state police and Prince Ludwig Windish-Graetz, to counterfeit French francs to use to create a dictatorship and make Prince Albrecht king, displacing “Regent” Miklós Horthy. The Princess Windish-Graetz is assured by the head jailer that her husband is occupying “the best cell in the building.” Most of the police work in uncovering this plot was done by the French.

Romanian Crown Prince Carol drops the “crown prince” business and is now calling himself Scarlat Mondstireanu, which is just a fun name. The royal family will pay his past debts but not support him financially in the future.

Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler gives his annual speech to the students, denouncing “sensational trashy periodical literature,” which cultivated types of people should ignore because life is just too short. He doesn’t seem to specify what literary elements make for such garbage lit, but we do know that in 1941 he will personally block Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls from winning the Pulitzer,  calling it “offensive and lascivious.”

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Today -100: January 5, 1926: Worthless parliamentarians are the worst kind of parliamentarians.

William Hale and Ernest Burkhart are arrested in Oklahoma for their role in a plot that murdered Osage Indians to steal their oil money. Hale & Burkhart are played by, respectively, Robert de Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos declares the Greek constitution null and void, saying “the whole nation is tired of worthless parliamentarians.”

The New Haven, Connecticut Klan disbands after finding itself at odds with the national Klan, which New Haven secretary Arthur Mann calls the “greatest organization of graft known,” which signs up “riffraff,” anarchists and radicals for the $10 membership fee.

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Today -100: January 4, 1926: Parliamentary government is the cause of all our troubles

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos, prime minister of Greece since June, declares himself dictator at a banquet of the Democratic guard, which is just sarcastic if you ask me. “Parliamentary government is the cause of all our troubles,” he declares.

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Today -100: January 3, 1926: I am glad the family kicked him out

Trotsky is elected to the Politburo. Stalin is re-elected as party general secretary.

A Pittsburgh Common Pleas Court judge rejects North Carolina’s request for the extradition of a black man on liquor charges after the judge is informed that he was indicted by a grand jury from which black people are excluded.

While some Romanians now think that Crown Prince Carol was forced to abdicate after participating in a plot to overthrow his father, King Ferdinand, he announces that he will divorce Princess Helen, which will be complicated because the marriage was Greek Orthodox. Carol is expected to look for a job in aviation. He’s been holed up in a hotel in Milan in which a Romanian woman is also staying, but is it his former wife or is it his mistress? Who can say. His brother Nicholas, who’s been living in Paris and is perhaps miffed that the belief there that he was the heir to the Romanian throne, which he did not contradict, has been refuted, says “Carol has done an unforgivable thing, and I am glad the family kicked him out.”

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Today -100: January 2, 1926: How much intelligence is the world prepared for?

Romanians are perplexed at Crown Prince Carol’s abdication. Some think it’s a woman thing, although they incorrectly assume the woman is the wife his family forced him to put aside, others think it’s about a scandal when he was chief of military aviation and it purchased some decrepit planes from France. His abdication letter says he won’t return to Romania for 6 years and after that only with the permission of the king and Parliament. 

Professor McDuff of Armstrong College, Durham University warns the Eugenics Educational Society that the white-collar labor market would become congested if the average intelligence were increased. “The world is not organized or prepared for a much higher level of intelligence than it already has.”

Only one person is killed trying to watch the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadina, falling off the top of a building, but a grand stand collapses, injuring 235. Another woman dies of a cerebral hemorrhage watching the collapse.

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Today -100: January 1, 1926: Profane parasitical constructions are the worst kind of constructions

Romanian Crown Prince Carol, who left the country to attend Queen Alexandra’s funeral in November and never came back, renounces his right to succeed to the throne, all his other royal rights, and his membership in the royal family. His father accepts super-fast. This has something to do with the married prince’s affair with the divorcee he later married, Magda Lupescu (this is not widely known yet). Carol married someone else in 1918 but the royal family annulled it. His 4-year-old son Michael will be the new heir to the throne.

The NAACP says there were 18 lynchings in the US in 1925. Mississippi had 6, Florida 3, Georgia 2, with 1 each in Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Virginia, and Utah. 2 were burned to death. The article does not give a racial breakdown, though I’ll bet the NAACP did.

Mussolini wants to make Rome great again: “Rome must again become the wonder of the whole world.” He plans to demolish the houses (“parasitical constructions”) and “the contamination of tramways” around the Pantheon and other ancient sites, including Christian temples, to create large squares around them, create wide boulevards á la Haussmann, and do it all within five years.

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