Today -100: April 24, 1926: Practical temperance rather than theoretical prohibition

The Illinois State Democratic Convention calls for modification of the Volstead Act to allow states to permit light wines and beer. “We favor practical temperance rather than theoretical prohibition.” The Republicans also meet, but fail to take any position on booze.

Germany & Russia agree a neutrality treaty.

Austria will change its army uniforms from green to grey, like the German uniform. They’re hoping for Anschluß by incremental stealth, hoping no one notices, or something.

Italy’s Interior Minister Luigi Federzoni creates a committee to combat birth control information or, as he terms it, “insidious, practical, pseudo-scientific neo-malthusian propaganda.” Italy’s greatest riches, Federzoni says, “is in the multiplication of its children, which is the strongest investment for invincible world expansion.”

The furniture of former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 84, is seized because he refused to pay the fine for delaying paying his taxes. He buys back the furniture before it’s carted away.

New Jersey Gov. Harry Moore does indeed refuse to meet the textile strikers’ rep Albert Weisbord and cancels an arbitration meeting, insisting that Weisbord should have had the “tact” not to show up.

Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot will premiere tomorrow at La Scala. Puccini died in 1924. Arturo Toscanini, who also premiered La bohème, will conduct.

In other opera news, Eduard Künnecke is adapting Dickens’s Little Dorrit. Almost finished, he says. He won’t finish it. I guess the next musical Dickens is Oliver.

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Today -100: April 23, 1926: Of gratification, trying English, and collapsible beds

Failed Headline of the Day -100:

“Ratification Gratification” was sitting right there.

Headline That... They Have To Have Known What They Were Doing, Right? of the Day -100:

That’s not the English language, which is tried but rarely in the US Senate to this day, but judge George Washington English of the District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois, a Wilson appointee, accused of, and now impeached for, various abuses of power.

The Passaic textile strikers pick Albert Weisbord to represent them, despite Gov. Harry Moore’s attempt to veto him. Will the guv refuse to meet with him?

The London production of Harlan Thompson & Harry Archer musical “Little Jessie James,” a big hit on Broadway a couple of years back, is banned by the Lord Chamberlain because there is a bed in one scene. Thompson points out that it is only a collapsible bed, “but the censor declined to regard it as less objectionable for that reason.”

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Today -100: April 22, 1926: Of unmistakable Communists, territorial limits, and princesses & jixes

NJ Gov. Harry Moore intervenes in the Passaic region textile strike by talking with mill owners and some random strikers but he refuses to speak with the actual strike leaders because they’re “unmistakably Communists.” Albert Weisbord, a strike leader who is totally a Communist, calls Moore, who is totally a bad egg, “a bad egg.”

A Circuit Court rules that the US has no jurisdiction to seize foreign rum ships beyond the 3-mile limit, treaties or no treaties.

British Home Sec Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) was present at the birth of Princess Elizabeth, presumably not actually in the birthing chamber, or whatever they call it, following the ancient custom that a government official attend a royal birth to ensure there’s no hanky-panky with the line of succession.

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Today -100: April 21, 1926: Of princesses and child marriages

Disney Princess Elizabeth of York is born. Although she’s third in line to the throne, she isn’t expected to ascend to the throne unless... well, just unless.

The NY Legislature passes a ban on marriages of children under the age of 14. A provision to also ban marriages between 14 and 16 without judicial approval disappeared mysteriously along the way. By the by, there is only one woman member of the Assembly, Rhoda Fox Graves. There are no women in the NY Senate; the first, Graves, will be elected in 1934.

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Today -100: April 20, 1926: Of courts and fasts

Secretary of State Kellogg rejects US participation in a conference of World Court members to discuss US reservations.

Two German hunger artists beat Jolly’s fasting record, quitting at 46 days. One of them is named Max Fastello, supposedly.

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Today -100: April 19, 1926: We cannot afford revelries

Turkey calls military recruits to the colors, worried about Mussolini’s speech in Tripoli and a suspected deal between Greece & Italy for each to grab chunks of Turkey, with Italy in the meantime building up Greece’s military.

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos is installed as president of Greece and will give up all the dictatorial powers he seized in January (suuuure he will).  He will free all the political prisoners & journalists he had arrested.

Headline of the Day -100:

“We cannot afford revelries,” Michael Stalin says (the NYT thinks that’s his first name. I say Russian history would have been very different if everyone had called him Mike).

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Today -100: April 18, 1926: Of poles, desire, and lightning

Roald Amundsen’s Arctic expedition, using an Italian airship, will drop Fascist flags and whatnot on the Pole.

The  Desire Under the Elms trial in L.A. ends in a mistrial.

The radio section of the Sunday NYT explains how not to get electrocuted through your antenna in a thunderstorm.

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Today -100: April 17, 1926: Air piracy is the geekiest kind of piracy

District Court Judge James Wilkerson rules that Commerce Sec. Herbert Hoover has no legal power to regulate radio broadcasting and acquits Zenith Radio Corp’s Chicago station, WJAZ, which changed its frequency without authorization to one assigned to Canadian stations in an act of “air piracy.”

Federal Prohibition Cracker-Downer Gen. Lincoln Andrews says he can stop all bootlegging if he’s given $3,000,000 and left alone. The money could come from taxing bootleggers.

The Los Angeles trial of 17 cast members of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms concludes. Their actors’ lawyer quotes the Bible and Shakespeare to show that they had dirty words too. The prosecutor claims that the performance given to the jury was “a parlor version,” with the actors slurring the naughtier lines.

The Royal Geographic Society spells the Baltic nation “Estonia,” but the US is sticking with “Esthonia.”

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Today -100: April 16, 1926: Thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!

Note to New York Times -100: must you refer to the king of Swaziland as “ebony ruler”? Sobhuza II tried to assert his rights to prevent an Englishman evicting Swazis; the Privy Council in London decides that he, while ostensibly ruler of a protectorate rather than a colony, has retained fewer rights than he thought he did.

British Home Sec Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) says the anxiety in the Cabinet over a possible coal strike is greater than that experienced during the war. PM Stanley Baldwin is personally intervening, but he doesn’t bring much to the table.

Mussolini, described as “radiant” and whose nose is no longer painted with iodine, leaves Libya after a speech explaining the importance of the colony to Italy: “Italians are people who reproduce rapidly and they are going to continue to do so. Italy is hungry for land and here is the opportunity to satisfy her.” What’s the Italian for lebensraum? He suggests to Italian colonists that “You cannot build a great colony by dancing at the Grand Hotel. You must learn the technique of colonization.”

Britain’s chief theatrical censor, the Lord Chamberlain, insists that American actor Frances Carson, playing Salome in Leonid Andreyev’s Katerina at the Barnes Theatre (alongside John Gielgud), wear more clothes, but she refuses the offer of a shawl.

An owl invades Calvin Coolidge’s White House bedroom, quietly perching on his bedpost.

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Today -100: April 15, 1926: Of rioting thomases, no relations, beer without saloons, and ladies being good

Norman Thomas, the Socialist who ran for NYC mayor & NY governor and will run for president a bunch of times, is arrested in Garfield, NJ (next to Passaic) for testing whether the reading of the Riot Act by cops at one small meeting bans all gatherings of strikers forever. He’s brought before Justice of the Peace Hargreaves, who refuses to allow him to have legal counsel.

Sen. William McKinley loses his bid for re-election in the Illinois Republican primaries in a campaign that largely focused on his support for the US joining the World Court. Some people criticize Coolidge for not coming to McKinley’s support given that he was backing Coolidge’s World Court policy.

Gen. Lincoln Andrews, head of federal Prohibition enforcement, says that allowing low-alcohol-content beer while still keeping saloons closed would make enforcement easier. Light wines he’s not so sure about. He will get a lot of shit for these comments.

France and Germany agree to allow each other’s planes overflight rights.

“Lady, Be Good,” the musical written by George & Ira Gershwin, starring Fred and Adele Astaire, is received with enthusiasm in London.

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Today -100: April 14, 1926: We call it contempt of court in New York

Herrin, Illinois, which we haven’t heard from for a while, again experiences Klan-related rioting, this time at the polls where the office of Williamson Country sheriff is up for grabs. Klan dude John Smith is attacked while he’s challenging the votes of Italians. Yadda yadda yadda, 6 dead, 3 kluxers and 3 anti-kluxers, the latter all sheriff’s deputies.

The NY Lege removes the Motion Picture Censorship Commission’s ability to censor newsreels.

British coal mine owners and the miners’ union meet, but fail to come to an agreement. This is coming to a head with the scheduled end of the government subsidy of the industry on May 1st. If affiliated unions also come out, we’re looking at a General Strike™.

The sheriff in Passaic County, New Jersey is to take over breaking the textile strike in the town of Garfield, invited by its mayor, William Burke, who happens to work for the Botany Worsted Mills. The sheriff will bring 150 deputies with riot guns and will read the riot act, which would ban public meetings and speeches and, of course, picketing. ACLU lawyer Arthur Garfield Hayes, correctly pointing out that “a striker cannot get justice in Garfield” after Justice of the Peace Hargreaves sets a $5,000 bail for newspaper owner Robert Wolfe, charged with not obeying quickly enough an order to move along. The JP threatens to arrest Hayes for disorderly conduct; Hayes points out “We call it contempt of court in New York.” Cheeky! Hargreaves also stops Hayes’s stenographer and a reporter from taking notes because “This is not a court of law, it is a court of martial law.” Hargreaves complains about “outside agitators.” I wonder when that phrase was first used?

Yale University forgives the freshmen who rioted against compulsory chapel attendance.

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Today -100: April 13, 1926: Just the same, it’s a nightgown

The first duel, at least in France, conducted with 4-ounce gloves is fought, if that is the word, between a Romanian and a Swiss in a Paris gymnasium. One is nearly knocked out in the 3rd round and the Swiss dude declared the winner. The subject of their quarrel is not disclosed.

The Senate ousts Smith Wildman Brookhart (“insurgent Republican”-Iowa) from his seat by a vote of 45 to 41. A bunch of Republicans join the D. motion because Brookhart supported Robert La Follette rather than Coolidge in the 1924 presidential election. They replace him with Dem. Daniel Steck, who Brookhart defeated, barely, questionably, in the 1924 election.

Steck will fill out his term and lose his bid for re-election in 1930. Brookhart will run for Iowa’s other Senate seat, winning the primary less than two months from now and then the general, making him work colleagues with Steck, which I’m sure wasn’t awkward in the slightest.

Col. Alexander Williams, commander of the Marine Corps’ 4th Regiment, is being court-martialed for having been drunk at a party.

Sentence of the Day -100: “He said he had dim recollections of a fight, but could not recall that an ostrich was his opponent.”

At the Los Angeles trial of 17 cast members of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms, a police officer who attended the play on behalf of the Board of Education says he found the play not to be of a clean character, but under cross-examination admits it would not incite him to any questionable action. The sensitive copper says he blushed and “After I left that place I couldn’t look the world in the face for hours.” He says his “feelings were hurt, terribly hurt,” especially by one actress wearing a nightgown. A defense lawyer shows him a photo of the extremely modest garment. “Just the same, it’s a nightgown,” the bashful copper insists. “And so you object to flannel nightgowns, do you?” “Yes, sir.”

A new New York state law punishes restaurant owners who falsely claim their food is kosher.

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Today -100: April 12, 1926: No one can stop our inexorable will

Mussolini has hisself a “triumphal procession” in Tripoli, although what his triumph is is unclear. He has iodine on his nose from being shot, and a white plume topping off his uniform (that of an honorary corporal in the Fascist militia), but can I find a picture of the beplumed Moose? I cannot. The NYT says he “looked every inch a Roman ruler” as he rode on a horsie past “strange crowds which seemed to combine the wild savagery of the desert with the instinctive calm of an ancient people”.

Honorary Corporal Mussolini’s address to the Libyan natives asserts that his visit is not a mere administrative act but an affirmation of the Italian people. “No one can stop our inexorable will,” he brags.

The buses of the Philadelphia-Asbury Park Coach Company will play radio programs in the day and motion pictures at night.

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Today -100: April 11, 1926: Of Daddy & Peaches

Chinese Prime Minister Duan Qirui is toppled by a coup, as was the custom.

NY real estate developer Edward West “Daddy” Browning, 51, marries Frances “Peaches” Heenan, 15. Browning had some time before advertised looking for a 14-year-old to adopt as a companion to a boy (or girl; I’ve seen it both ways) he’d adopted as one of a pair with his first wife, who then fled to Paris with her dentist, keeping the other kid. Browning likes adopting girls, some of whom were essentially sold to him by their parents. Browning met Frances at a high school sorority dance which he’d sponsored, as one does. They married to short-circuit an action in Children’s Court brought by the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, during a one-week postponement granted because someone supposedly threw acid at Frances.

The happy couple (I love that guy on the left)

The millionaire didn’t tip the town clerk, the article reveals.

Anyways, they’ll separate, he’ll try to adopt a 16-year-old who will turn out to be in actuality 21, a legal adult ineligible for adoption. Peaches will have a vaudeville career and an affair with Milton Berle. And I haven’t even mentioned the African goose. There’s a book, because of course there is.

Headline of the Day -100:

How proud they must be of themselves.

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Today -100: April 10, 1926: My voyage to Libya contains no menace

Mussolini says his trip to Tripoli isn’t about threatening other European colonizers: “My voyage to Libya contains no menace.” 

There’s a very brief military coup in Greece.

Germany is demanding, not its own air force per se, but for its army officers to be allowed to train as pilots. After all, they say, flying is now considered a sport, so officers have as much a right to fly as to play golf.

British miners reject the mineowners’ proposal that they accept reduced wages and longer hours. I’m sure this can all be resolved without any unpleasantness. 

The Post Office bars the April issue of Mencken’s The American Mercury from the mails.

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Today -100: April 9, 1926: Of reapportionment and redwoods

The House of Representatives refuses, by a vote of 265 to 87, to do its constitutionally mandated duty to reapportion congressional districts following the 1920 census. Some congresscritters claim that there is no such constitutionally mandated duty.

Prohibition agents padlock a redwood tree in Humboldt County, California which someone had turned into a still.

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Today -100: April 8, 1926: Fancy, a woman!

Irishwoman Violet Gibson, 49, daughter of Lord Ashbourne, who was lord chancellor of Ireland on and off between 1885 and 1905, shoots Benito Mussolini right in his fat face, grazing his fat nose (you know that thing he did where he crosses his arms and tilts his fat head back super-smugly? that’s what saved him from the bullet entering his fat brain). Then her gun jams. This is not the first assassination attempt on The Duck, nor will it be the last, but Gibson was the only woman would-be assassin and the only one who actually succeeded in shooting him. “Fancy, a woman!” he says. The Duck calls for no disorder, but there is, of course, disorder, with Fascists attacking the remaining opposition newspapers and chanting slogans in the streets.

Annoyingly, this will just increase his popularity. Pope Pius says Moose was “spared by God.” After a year of back and forth in the Italian government over how to deal with this – portray it as a conspiracy, put her on trial, treat the whole thing as an amusing incident and put it behind them as quickly as possible, (the Duck’s approach), claim Gibson is insane (which she kinda is, just look at her eyes! LOOK AT HER EYES!),

(although, compare and contrast that image, printed in many newspapers, with this, in today’s paper

or this, as they appear now)

They’ll deport her to Britain, where she will spend the remaining 30 years of her life in an insane asylum, abandoned by her embarrassed family. There’s a biography of her, and there’s an Irish television documentary, available free on Tubi.

Capt. George Wilkins & Lt. Carl Eielson fly over the Arctic Ocean, looking for previously undiscovered land to claim for the US. They don’t find any. They plan to explore the Pole of Inaccessibility, presumably looking for Bond-villain bases.

Yet another clash between textile strikers and cops in Passaic, NJ. Small boys throw stones at the police chief’s car. The American Legion deploys on the side of the mills but are forced to flee.

Judge James Parmenter of the Boston Municipal Court acquits H.L. Mencken, saying the American Mercury does not tend to corrupt the morals of youths. He finds all the articles in it “intellectual and of serious nature,” although he just doesn’t understand the one about jazz.

A group of “fanatical university students” in Budapest are arrested for planning an armed invasion of Czechoslovakia. A “former archduke” is rumored to be involved.

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Today -100: April 7, 1926: Of Shylock nations, quacks, shonks, pretenders, werewolves?, and sex magazines

Fascists in Venice, pissed at the US Senate’s delays in passing the war debt settlement and at Sen. William Borah’s comments during the debate about Fascist violence in Italy, attack sailors from US destroyers. In the Piazza San Marco, Fascists call one sailor “a fat swine and the representative of a Shylock nation.” The four destroyers abruptly leave Venice, possibly pursued by Fascist gondoliers.

There’s a movement to “boom” Columbia University Pres. Nicholas Murray Butler for the Republican nomination for governor of New York. They think an opponent of Prohibition like him is the party’s best chance, or to put it another way, that Prohibition may be a decisive issue in 1926.

The New York Legislature passes a bill requiring physicians to be registered every year. There is a problem, or at least a panic, over “quack” doctors.

The New York State Assembly rejects the Shonk Bill for a 48-hour week for women and minors. Women are currently limited to 54 hours.

Herbert Shonk is my new favorite name.

A “congress” of Russian exiles in Paris chooses Grand Duke Nicholas, the first cousin once removed of the late Czar Nicholas, to lead the “glorious task of liberating our country.” He replies that it is the poor oppressed Russian people who “have the right to establish the basis of their existence.” In other words, start without me.

Elsewhere, Prince Jean, Duke of Guise takes over as the new pretender to the French throne from the Orléanist line, following the death of Prince Louis Philippe. He did have the option of renouncing the “title” and thus avoid having to leave France under the 1886 law exiling the heads of the 3 overthrown royal lines, but he boldly steps up, saying “I lay claim to all his [Louis Philippe’s] rights...” Of which there are none. “I assume all the responsibilities...” Of which there are none. “and I accept all the duties...” Of which there are none. “...of that position.” He will call himself King Philip VIII. He is married to his cousin, because of course he is.

In Berlin on Easter Monday, Communists and Werewolves fight over a café, which is probably not as entertaining as it sounds and which leads to one death and one wrecked café. In Munich, police break up Communist conferences.

H.L. Mencken counter-sues Franklin Chase over his arrest for selling an issue of the American Mercury. He informs the judge that the Merc is not a sex magazine, which makes you wonder – or is it just me? – what a sex magazine edited by H.L. Mencken would be like.

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Today -100: April 6, 1926: Malicious prosecutions are the funnest kind of prosecution

Former New Mexico governor Washington Ellsworth Lindsey, which is not a very New-Mexico-governor sort of name, kills  himself, possibly due to illness. His obit very nearly spells his name correctly.

H.L. Mencken is arrested on Boston Common, in a pre-arranged test case/publicity move, for selling an issue of The American Mercury to Franklin Chase of the Watch and Ward Society, who has been trying to get the Merc prosecuted and banned from the mails at least since it published an article, “Keeping the Puritans Pure” by A. L. S. Wood, of which he was the subject, although the court case will be about the article “Hatrack” by Herbert Asbury, which is about the hypocrisy of small towns towards “harlots” and is sadly free of “obscenity,” if you ask me.

Former Kansas governor Jonathan Davis, acquitted on charges of selling pardons, sues three Kansas City newspapers, various editors and reporters, prison guards, a highwayman, and a bank wrecker, for libel and malicious prosecution.

At the 96th annual conference of the Mormons, Mormon Pres. Heber Grant warns against immodest skirts and afternoon teas.

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Today -100: April 5, 1926: Looks like I’ll have to run

Austria’s Supreme Court abolishes stage censorship.

Kansas’s former governor Jonathan Davis, now “cleared” of having sold pardons, says “Looks like I’ll have to run” for governor again.

Mussolini will visit the Italian colony Tripoli. He’s going there on a warship. The Fascist paper Popolo d’Italia, which translates, I believe, as The Poppadom of Italy, says the ship recalls the ships of the Punic Wars: “It is a spectacle of force, not a parade; it is a majestic sign of greatness, not the order of the day in a debating hall.” This excursion is supposed to show the unified nature of the new Italy, putting aside petty regional squabbles in favor of oppressing people in Africa like a big boy nation. Later this month there’ll be a National Colonial Day.

Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot warns state employees not to campaign against his candidacy for US Senate, or else.

A secret meeting last week of royalists from Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Russia agreed to establish a monarchist international.

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Today -100: April 4, 1926: If you’re being bribed by a forger, inspect the bag o’ cash very carefully

Kansas’s former governor Jonathan Davis and his son Russell are acquitted for the second time for taking a $1,250 bribe to pardon a forger. One wonders what the juries were thinking.

Communal fighting in Calcutta, which was set off by Hindu Samajists invading a mosque, kills at least a dozen. So far.

Italian organ grinders, some of them with monkeys, have left the streets of London in droves, following the order of Mussolini, who thinks they harm Italian prestige. Their, um, jobs have been filled by crippled & blind war veterans.

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Today -100: April 3, 1926: Of prohibition, slander, and studying communism

Against a rising feeling that Prohibition enforcement is already going too far, an amendment to the Volstead Act is introduced in the US Senate at the behest of Gen. Lincoln Andrews, the head of the federal Prohibition agents, increasing penalties and seizures for various booze crimes, and more controversially allowing dry cops to break into people’s houses that have stills...

(https://theonion.com/dhs-ice-can-enter-homes-without-pants/)

Chicago radio announcer Philip Friedlander is fined $25 in the very first radio slander case for falsely broadcasting that State’s Attorney Robert Crowe was seen entering the Moulin Rouge cabaret.

California Attorney Gen. Ulysses Sigel Webb rules that schoolchildren can’t be asked to write essays about Communism, because that would force them to research the subject.

I wonder how many parents naming their kid after Gen. Grant (Webb was born in 1864) had to decide for themselves what the S. should stand for, since in Grant’s case it didn’t stand for anything (and his real first name was Hiram), and how many of those parents chose “Sigel.”

One of my resentments about Grant and Harry S. Truman is that they insisted on putting a period after the S., signifying an abbreviation when there was no actual abbreviation.

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Today -100: April 2, 1926: Of bankruptcy rings and bathtubs

George W. English, a Wilson appointee to the District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois, is impeached by the House of Representatives for high misdemeanors (that’s the worst kind of misdemeanor), abuse of power (“tyranny and oppression”). Something about a “bankruptcy ring.” It’s kind of obscure to me. And to the congresscritters. At one point their vote on one of the charges is walked back because they didn’t understand what they were voting on. At one point John Rankin (D-Miss.) and Ogden Mills (R-NY) get into a slanging match and a near-fistfight. Rankin later denies having used what is described only as a “highly insulting term,” saying “I would not call any white man what I had in mind.”

Theatre producer Earl Carroll is arrested for perjury for denying that at a party he threw for Harry Thaw, the killer of Stanford White, a naked woman swam on the stage of his theatre in a bathtub full of “alleged wine,” as was the custom.

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Today -100: April 1, 1926: 21 nuns, no waiting

The House Foreign Affairs Committee hears “evidence” that 21 Carmelite nuns who were illegally teaching religion in Mexico were arrested and threatened with being sold to bordellos.

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Today -100: March 31, 1926: Follow the dotted line

Democrats in the Senate plan to block ratification of the war debt repayment deal with Italy until after the mid-terms, considering it overly generous. Reed Smoot (R-Utah), opposing the rejection of the deal, says “I do not want to see Italy exhausted.”

Vera, Countess Cathcart sails for England. Her play having failed, she plans to try to make money writing about her immigration problems in the US.

France resumes sending prisoners to Devil’s Island, 340 of them. Captain Louis Grenet of the prison ship La Martinière (which the NYT amusingly misnames La Mariniere, which is the name of those French blue & white stripey shirts) charmingly declares that there’s no risk of mutiny: “Hot steam from ten pumps into the cages soon melts any revolt.” One of the prisoners, whose sentence of death by the guillotine had been commuted by the president, has a tattoo around his neck: “Executioner, when cutting, follow the dotted line.”

Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey have a second son, Sydney, less than 11 months after Charles Jr. was born. Lita has yet to reach her 18th birthday.

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Today -100: March 30, 1926: Of censors and fasters

The League of Nations Advisory Commission on Child Welfare wants to establish movie censorship boards, one in each country.

Berlin hunger artist “Jolly” ends his public fast after 44 days. Quitter. 44 days is a record for “professionals,” as opposed to starving people.

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Today -100: March 29, 1926: Of pretenders, bread, loop the loops, and glaciers

Obit of the Day -100: Prince Louis Philippe, who had been the pretender to the French throne since 1894 for the Orléanist royal line, dies of pneumonia at 57 in Sicily. His great-grandfather was deposed by the 1848 revolution. Exiled from France more than once, LP was imprisoned when he tried to return to offer to do his military service. He filled his time never being king by serving in the British army; trying to join the French, Russian, Belgian and Italian armies; hunting; climbing mountains in Tibet; being an anti-Dreyfusard; getting named in multiple divorce cases (the dude, sorry, Duke, liked to fuck). It was a busy life but a useless one.

Americans are eating less bread, partly because home baking is declining. Also, sliced bread hasnt been invented yet (it will in a couple of years).

Aviatrix Sophie Elliot-Lynn (whose name was seemingly never spelled the same way twice) loops the loop, the first woman to do so in Britain. She also does a spinning nosedive and other stunts. She scoffs at the thought that all this shit is dangerous: “Airplanes have been brought to such perfection that there is little danger.” She will have a minor crash in 1929 but it will be a fall down the stairs of a London tram that will kill her in 1939.

A group of US and Canadian scientists apply to the Danish government to go to Greenland with some thermite to blow up glaciers to clear the sea routes and because it would be cool.

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Today -100: March 28, 1926: Of cursed tombs, downing pens, furniture, highest destinies, and horsies and buggies

Georges Bénédite, Egyptologist and curator of the Louvre, dies in Luxor, the 6th victim of the Vengeance of Tutankhamen™.

A playwrights’ strike is averted. Their beef with producers had something to do with musical numbers being performed by bands.

Grace Coolidge, redecorating the White House in early Colonial style, appeals to the nation for free furniture. See, that sort of furniture “cannot be purchased” because it is handed down generation to generation, so people should stop doing that and instead donate it, free, to the White House.  (The White House will deny asking for free furniture, but I notice it took several days for them to do so).

The textile strikers in Passaic, NJ (yes, the strike is still going on) call for the arrest of  Chief of Police Richard Zober and 12 other cops for assault. Of course an arrest warrant was already issued 3 weeks ago, but no one could be prevailed upon to serve it. The ACLU is threatening civil suits. 

Wyoming Gov. Nellie Tayloe Ross tells some Girl Scouts that freedom for women is great and everything, but “I am old-fashioned enough, however, to believe that no career is as glorious or satisfying as that which wifehood and motherhood offers, and it is there she fulfills her highest destiny.”

Chicago mayoral election news: the Post Office is unable to find 50,000 addresses of registered voters, presumably fake ones. And Mayor Big Bill Thompson and his competitor, State’s Attorney Robert Crowe, both file libel actions against The Chicago Evening Post for reporting that they’d gotten into a fist fight. They say they didn’t (a likely story).

In 1881, Sheriff S. Foster Black arrested “Edwin Turner” for stealing a horse and buggy in Binghamton. Turner then escaped from the Broome County, New Jersey jail, going out the window on a rope tied from sheets, as was the custom, was re-captured and then, while being transported, escaped from a train via, what else, the bathroom window. Now, 45 years later, Black, who is now a 91-year-old deputy sheriff (and was the one who allowed him to use that bathroom), spots a newspaper picture of one Edwin Turner Osbaldeston, who claims to be the oldest survivor of the Crimean War, so Black arrests him yet again. Osbaldeston, 93, is a retired doctor in Ashbury Park. He claims this is a case of mistaken identity and that he has never been in Binghamton in his life (a likely story).

George Hir, Hungarian deputy from the fascist Awakening Hungarians party, dies from poisoning. His wife denies that it was a suicide, insisting he was murdered by the Doublecross League of Blood, something related to the fascist plot to counterfeit French francs to finance a coup.

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Today -100: March 27, 1926: Beloved or feared and respected by all

Sen. Walter Edge (R-NJ) introduces a resolution for a referendum in every state on modifying prohibition to permit less boozy booze. For some reason, this would be on the 1928 rather than the 1926 ballot.

Mussolini celebrates the 7th anniversary of the Fascist movement with “the severe discipline of the strong.” “At home the government has solved formidable problems with the consent of the people, while opposition of all sorts was dispersed.” Because nothing says consent like dispersing opposition of all sorts. The Moose continues, Trumpily: “Abroad Fascist Italy is beloved or feared and respected by all, in spite of the impotent maneuvers of the old and outcast political parties we have definitely wiped out.”

Ruth Bryan Owen, William Jennings Bryan’s daughter, announces that she is considering running for the Florida Legislature. She won’t; she’ll run for the US Congress instead. She’ll lose, but she’ll win in 1928.

The Holy Synod in Moscow, which rules the Red faction of the Russian Orthodox Church, will abolish monasticism. Monks will be required to take up some useful profession.

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Today -100: March 26, 1926: Of fake Spanish women, real miracles, former royals, and castor-oil and rubber-club adolescences

Luis Fernando / Luigi Ferdinando d'Orléans, a French AND Spanish prince who was expelled from France for “bad conduct” in 1924 and then stripped of his Spanish princely privileges, is arrested by customs officials on the Spanish/Portuguese border (the article doesn’t specify which country’s officials) on suspicion of smuggling (nor does it specify what he was smuggling), disguised as a Spanish woman.

Headline of the Day -100:

(The article does not explain what the hell he’s talking about).

12.5 million signatures have been collected in Germany for a plebiscite on confiscating without compensation the properties of all the former royal families. That’s enough signatures to force the holding of the plebiscite.

The NYT says that Mussolini isn’t getting blowback from the Matteotti trial because he’s successfully ascribed the 1924 murder to an earlier phase of Fascism. “The movement has outgrown its castor-oil and rubber-club adolescence.”

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Today -100: March 25, 1926: Guilty guilty guilty

The trial for the murder of Giacomo Matteotti ends with 2 of the defendants acquitted and 3 found guilty of unintentional murder. Amerigo Dumini, Albino Volpi and Ameleto Poveromo (whose name in his Italian Wikipedia article is translated by my web browser as Hamlet the Poor Man) are sentenced to nearly 6 years, but will get the benefit of time served and an amnesty law for political murders and be out in a couple of months. Dumini and Hamlet the Poor Man will be re-tried after World War II and get longer sentences. Dumini will electrocute himself while changing a lightbulb in 1967.

The New Jersey Hotel Men’s Association is fighting a bill in the NJ Lege which would allow black people denied service in hotels, theatres, restaurants, etc to sue for $500.

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Today -100: March 24, 1926: I never heard a more self-complacent speech in my life

The Reichstag defeats a motion of no confidence in Chancellor Hans Luther 259 to 141 after Luther tells them that the Locarno treaties form the basis of his policies. The debate features the debut speech of Grand Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz, the unrestricted-submarine-warfare guy from the last war, who says Locarno and the League of Nations would bring Germany “into complete dependency on France,” adding, “but not in some kinky sexual way.” He may not have said the last bit.

In the British Parliament, Foreign Sec. Austen Chamberlain survives a resolution brought by former PM David Lloyd George to reduce his salary (by how much is not specified here) after a vote of 325 to 136. Chamberlain’s speech was marked by “ill-temper” and “a feeling of self-satisfaction,” was “conspicuous for length rather than clearness, for acidity of tone rather than power of argument.” Former PM Ramsay MacDonald says “I never heard a more self-complacent speech in my life.” Everyone’s a critic.

At the Matteotti trial, the lawyers for 3 of the accused say that Matty totally brought it on himself by not surrendering after the Fascists “conquered” but continued to “torment” the poor Fascists until they could take it no more. Part of this blame-the-victim approach is to assert that they killed him because he was a nasty person and not because he was an MP; there’s a special penalty for people who murder MPs.

is a claim I’m pretty sure we’ve seen a few times before.

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Today -100: March 23, 1926: When Irish elves are smiling

The NY State Senate kills bills to restore state enforcement of Prohibition.

Vera, Countess Cathcart’s play Ashes of Love opens on Broadway, with the countess playing the lead role. The audience found it “dull” and laughed in all the wrong places, according to the NYT. She evidently sucks as both a playwright and an actor.

Mysterious “elfin” music is heard near Milltown, Ireland.  Hundreds have traveled thence to catch a glimpse of the elves.

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Today -100: March 22, 1926: Of dictators and humanized public institutions

Headline of the Day -100:

No kidding.

Actually, the article, which does not mention Herr Hitler at all, is about media tycoon Alfred Hugenberg, the Rupert Murdoch of his day, whose far-right German National People’s Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, or DNVP) is still a couple of inches shy of fascism. HuggyBear’s preferred dictator, if any, is not revealed.

Labor Secretary James J. Davis is evidently so vital to the functioning of the federal government that Coolidge told him not to run for governor of Pennsylvania, so he says he won’t, although he does inform us of what his platform would be if he did run, which he says he won’t. He would “humanize our public institutions,” which is a good way of describing reforms or probation and juvenile courts and abolishing poor houses. He really won’t run for governor, although it sure sounds like he’s champing at the bit. He will be elected to the US Senate in 1930.

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Today -100: March 21, 1926: Of vets-screwer-overs, illinium, and nipples

Charles Forbes, the former head of the Veterans’ Bureau, which he and his cronies robbed blind, begins a two-year sentence at Leavenworth, of which he’ll serve 20 months.

Element #61 has been discovered by scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and named illinium. In other news: no, they haven’t, they just think they have. Which is probably why my computer doesn’t recognize the word “illinium.”

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: March 20, 1926: Is it a dog or a fish?

John Calvin Coolidge Sr. deeded his farm to Pres. Coolidge 3 weeks ago and other property before that. Inheritance tax avoidance? The deed was actually owned until 3 weeks ago by the estate of his father, Calvin Galusha Coolidge, who died in 1878. The successful businessman/farmer/etc died supposedly penniless and without a will.

NYT Op-ed on JCC Sr.: “The most that could be got out of his close-lipped Yankee taciturnity was the expression of his belief that his son would do ‘fairly well’ as President.”

King George visits a London exhibition of Canadian artists and is baffled, by a Futurist painting, as was the custom, asking “Is it a dog or a fish?” (the artist is sadly unidentified, nor is the species depicted in the artwork revealed, which is just poor journalism). 

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Today -100: March 19, 1926: Of Seniors and challengers

Pres. Coolidge’s father, Col. John Calvin Coolidge Sr., dies at age 80. A retired JP and former Vermont legislator and senator, Senior also occupied posts ranging from constable to road commissioners to town selectman. The president was informed onboard the train he was taking to Senior’s bedside.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Land of Mist is published, in which he shits on his Professor Challenger character, who discovers the spirit world, or something. At least Doyle didn’t do this to Sherlock Holmes.

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Today -100: March 18, 1926: Of leagues, gross immorality, and pygmies

The League of Nations Assembly fails to admit Germany to the League because of the whole fight about who gets to join the Council and in what order. Everybody’s blaming Brazil. The League will take this up again in the next session in five months.

Famous biologist J.B.S. Haldane, who will coin the word “clone,” at least in its modern sense, wins his appeal against his expulsion from the Cambridge University staff by the Sex Viri committee (If you are at work, do not google “sex viri”) for “gross immorality” because he was named as a respondent in the divorce case of Charlotte Franken, which some people seem to think is none of Cambridge’s business. He will marry Franken later in the year.

An expedition to Dutch New Guinea led by Berkeley Prof. Matthew Stirling begins next month. It’s looking for pygmies, as one does.

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Today -100: March 17, 1926: His death was a tremendous blow to me

The New York Assembly Judiciary Committee, dominated by Republicans,  kills Gov. Al Smith’s measures for a 4-year gubernatorial term, for reapportionment for both houses of the Legislature on the basis of – can you imagine it? – population. It does approve a referendum for a pay raise for the governor, whose current $10,000 a year is less than that of some of his appointees. The State Senate Judiciary Committee kills a proposal for a referendum to ask the US Congress to modify the Volstead act to permit the sale of light wines and beer. The Assembly’s Labor and Industries Committee kills Smith’s proposal for a 48-hour work week for women & children.

The first witness at the much-delayed Matteotti murder trial, Amerigo Dumini, leader of the Fascist death squad, admits to organizing the Socialist leader’s kidnapping, but claims Matteotti died of natural causes, as one does during a kidnapping: “Matteotti was not murdered, he died. His death was a tremendous blow to me.” Dumini says he couldn’t have been part of the actual killing because he was driving the car. Then why did you have bruises when you were arrested 2 days later? he is asked. He denies he had bruises only to be shown the report of the police doctor. Old war wounds and insect bites, he says. And what about all the blood on the car if Matty died of TB? It ain’t going well for Dumini. He is unable to substantiate his claim that Matteotti was involved in the 1924 murder of Fascist Nicola Bonservizi in France (which he wasn’t).

The Indianapolis City Council adopts an ordinance pushed by the White People’s Protective League for residential segregation by race.

The House of Representatives votes 48 to 2 to reject an amendment to the DC Appropriations Bill withholding the salary of any teacher who teaches evolution or “disrespect to the Bible, partisan politics or that ours is an inferior form of government.”

Headline of the Day -100:

“I can totally pull out in time,” Herbert Hoover says.

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Today -100: March 16, 1926: Kitty!

The Great Smoky Mountain Conservation Society sends Pres. Coolidge a wildcat as a, you know, pet. Instead, he’ll be sending it to the zoo.

The Italian government makes its first (?) use of the law allowing it to strip the citizenship of expats who criticize the Fascist regime, in this case the radical journalist Carlo Tresca, currently residing in New York.

Lady Vera Terrington, who was the 4th woman Member of Parliament (1923-4), is divorcing Harold, the 2nd Lord Terrington, for adultery. He says he will fight the suit.

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Today -100: March 15, 1926: If they don’t want them that’s their look-out

Capt. Frank Doudera, a famous hunter, is bringing two timber wolves he captured in Quebec to New York, intending to give one to Mayor Jimmy Walker and the other to Brooklyn Borough President Joseph Guider. This according to a telegram he sent the Canadian Pacific Railway, which informed the NYT. Do they WANT timber wolves, the intrepid reporter asks. “I don’t know,” but “if they don’t want them that’s their look-out.”

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Today -100: March 14, 1926: Of booze and bribes

An Anti-Saloon League delegation visits the White House, trying to get Coolidge to condemn the move in Congress to, um, water down the Volstead Act. Coolidge evidently tells them he doesn’t see any need to inject himself into the Prohibition discussion.

The US government, as I probably mentioned, is suing to cancel Harry Sinclair’s Teapot Dome oil lease. Wallace Abbott, secretary to former Interior Secretary Albert Fall, was supposed to testify about Sinclair’s bribing of Fall; instead, he commits suicide.

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Today -100: March 13, 1926: Of reasonable concessions, dining alone, fasts, and disarmaments

Germany rejects the compromise proposal that Poland join the League of Nations Council on a non-permanent basis at the same time as Germany joins both the League and the Council, with decisions on Spain and Brazil postponed. French PM Aristide Briand says they’ve reached “the extreme limit of concessions.” British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain says there’s no point in further discussions: “We have made every reasonable concession, and if the Locarno plan fails now the plain fault will be that of Germany” (yes, it’s his brother Neville who made every unreasonable concession to Germany in 1938).

It’s generally agreed that if an agreement is not reached, the future of the League of Nations would be in doubt, and the already shaky governments of France and Germany, and possibly Britain, would fall.

Since Crown Prince Carol renounced the Romanian throne in January, the king and queen are barely speaking and no longer eat together. There is a plan afoot to allow him to return from exile as a private citizen. (The article offhandedly, after the fold, mentions that 1) there is an anti-Semitic student strike in Bucharest, 2) the Horthy regime is using it as an excuse to station troops there just when it’s trying to get the parliament to pass a new voting system modeled on Mussolini’s. Maybe put that shit ahead of the royal gossip).

Following the success of hunger artist “Jolly,” so many people have applied to sit in a glass booth and not eat that the Berlin chief of police bans any new professional fasters (grandfathering in those like Jolly who are currently mid-fast).

The Danish Folketing (Parliament) votes to mostly abolish the army and navy.

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Today -100: March 12, 1926: Like asking a Methodist to seek a pardon for being a Methodist

Virginia’s State Senate has its first ever impeachment, that of Sen. Alfred C. Smith, after it’s discovered that he was convicted of forgery in South Carolina in 1913 and of getting his Virginia law licence fraudulently in 1914. During the impeachment debate, Smith accuses Sen. James Barron of doing the work of the Knights of Columbus. The senate removes him from office. In November he’ll be re-elected, unopposed (!) to serve the remainder of his term. He’ll be convicted of fraud, again, in 1938 and go to prison.

Socialist congresscritter Victor Berger lobbies the government to restore Eugene Debs’s civil rights. Attorney Gen. John Sargent tells him Debs would have to apply for a pardon personally. Berger says this Debs refuses to do because he asserts that he did nothing wrong: “This is like asking a Methodist to seek a pardon for being a Methodist.”

During a debate in the British Parliament on maintaining a Navy of 102,675 men, George Lansbury (grandfather of Angela) proposes reducing that by, oh, say, 100,000, saying the Navy is used for capitalist exploitation throughout the world. His motion loses 167 to 19.

Mississippi bans the teaching in state-supported schools that man “ascended or descended from a lower order of animals.”

Austrian Fascists are calling for restorations(s) of the Habsbugs (that was a typo, but I like it so I’m keeping it), but with Otto as king of Austria and other Habsbugs as kings of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Croatia. I’m not sure how this would work with their other goal of Anschluß with Germany; presumably Germany would have to restore its own emperor or even all its royal families.

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Today -100: March 11, 1926: Of councils, beer, and engagements

Brazil threatens to veto Germany joining the League of Nations Council (which would stop it joining the League at all) if Brazil doesn’t also get a permanent seat on it (no South American country currently has a permanent seat). Other countries (Italy, Spain) might block German entry to the Council if other countries don’t come in at the same time, but Sweden is threatening to veto the entry to the Council of any other country than Germany. (Also, if Germany doesn’t join the League, the Locarno treaties don’t go into effect).

During a heated debate in the House on relaxing Prohibition, Emanuel Celler (D-NY) reads out George Washington’s recipe for beer.

Rudolph Valentino denies rumors spread by Pola Negri that they are engaged. She pulled this same stunt with Charlie Chaplin.

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