The Justice Dept rules that Commerce Sec Herbert Hoover does not have the power to regulate radio without Congress giving him that power. There are 600 pending applications for new stations (and 530 existing stations) and not enough wavelengths, but now there’s no one to stop stations opening up anyway or to stop them using frequencies currently assigned to Canadian stations.
King Ferdinand of Romania says the reason Prince Carol renounced the throne last December was that Ferdinand forced him to because of his “repeated moral delinquencies” (i.e., he was fucking around).
The Polish Cabinet gives coup leader Marshal Józef Piłsudski use of the Belweder Palace, which is purportedly haunted. Piłsudski says he ain’t afraid of no ghosts.
Mexican elections are going on, along with violent clashes, as is the custom. 9 people including a congressional candidate are killed in Dolores Hidalgo, not the first one in this election cycle.
As the Italian lira continues to fall, Mussolini declares a one-year moratorium on knighthoods and other honors. Something about Italians having to live in a simpler fashion.
As the French franc continues to fall, Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux demands that his stabilization plan, which includes giving him lots of new powers and going ahead with the deal to pay off the war debt to the US, be fully implemented, or they’ll have to accept Socialist Party leader Léon Blum’s capital levy plan. “Ideology, ideology, your capital levy, Monsieur Blum!”
US Attorney Gen. John Sargent complains about people violating Prohibition laws; he’s not happy with people criticizing them either: “The authority he [the boozer] is defying in the one matter wherein his individual inclination differs with it is the same and only authority that stands between him and despotism of some one stronger than he.” Speaking at the dedication of a war memorial in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he tells such Dry Law scoffers to “consider the effect of conduct more threatening to the nation and its institutions than any European nation ever was.” Soldiers, he says, “gave their lives for discipline, for obedience to law”. I wonder if they really knew that they were fighting the Hun for Prohibition?
In the federal trial in NYC of mobster Big Bill Dwyer for violations of those very Prohibition laws, they’re having difficulty finding jurors who aren’t personally opposed to Prohibition and who wouldn’t be “embarrassed” to sit on a jury.
Aimee Semple McPherson tells the LA County grand jury her story of her alleged abduction, after refusing to promise to keep her testimony secret. However, we don’t know, yet, what that testimony is. A nurse from the Arizona hospital at which ASM stayed after her reappearance says she sure didn’t look like she’d walked 20 miles through a desert; no sunburn, dehydration, etc.
Cuba has its first execution in 20 years. Salvador Aguilera, who murdered his aunt, is garroted. Two prisoners are assigned, or possibly volunteer, to be the executioners, in exchange for shorter sentences. One gets hysterical, the other is a black American, a veteran of the Battle of San Juan Hill in jail for robbery. Aguilera is left in the garrote 4 hours after his death, as was the custom. I did an image search on “garrote,” and I do not recommend it. The device was introduced to Cuba by the Spanish, because of course it was.
Rudolph Valentino’s film Son of the Sheik, a sequel to The Sheik, premieres.
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