Today -100: August 3, 1926: Of national sovereignty, piety, and war bread

British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain defends the British-Italian pact establishing zones of influence in Abyssinia. He claims his Lake Tsana plans were more or less approved by the late Emperor Menelik; whether he has any proof of this is unclear. He will tell the League of Nations that the pact doesn’t involve any question of national sovereignty, which isn’t complete bullshit at all.

After several incidents of non-Catholics visiting the Vatican refusing to kneel before the pope, applicants for an audience will be questioned about their intentions and levels of piety.

Mussolini asks Italians to help the financial situation by eating “war bread,” with a maximum of 80-85% wheat, to cut down on wheat imports. Pastries and luxury breads made with wheat flour will be banned.

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Today -100: August 2, 1926: Of poniards and Zangwill

A Catalan anarchist tries to assassinate Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera by throwing a dagger (poniard) at him as he drives by, as was the custom. It misses.

Mexico claims to have uncovered a plot to assassinate Pres. Plutarco Elías Calles.

Israel Zangwill, British novelist (pioneering locked-room mystery The Big Bow Mystery [1891]; Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People [1892]), playwright, Zionist, dies at 62.

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Today -100: August 1, 1926: It’s a miracle!

The cross on the spire of the Church of San Jerónimo in Mexico City has started shaking, obviously in protest at the government persecution of the Catholic Church.

The Catholic boycott campaign includes 2,000 car owners in Mexico City canceling their licenses.

Manuel Quezon, president of the Philippines Senate, says Filipinos want Governor-General Leonard Wood, who he calls “an amiable gentleman,” replaced by a civilian, even an American (Quezon will be president in a few years). He’s cautiously interested in US plans, promoted by Harvey Firestone, to grow rubber in the Philippines but doesn’t want the development of large plantations.

Texas Democratic county conventions meet and unanimously tell Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson to resign – now – as she promised to do if she lost the primary.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: July 31, 1926: Of legations and med students

Mexican police fire into a crowd which refuses to leave the Church of San Rafael in the capital. The head of the Vatican’s legation is ordered out of the country within 24 hours, extended to 48 hours at the request of the Italian embassy.

Hungary thinks it has too many doctors, so it bans any new women medical students.

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Today -100: July 30, 1926: If Catholics, scarfaces, and evangelists

The Mexican government is expecting trouble when the anti-Catholic Church law comes into effect. Catholics are ordered disarmed, newspaper editors are arrested. Vatican officials are discussing putting an interdict on the whole country, although the pope is wary.

The state of Illinois admits that it doesn’t have enough evidence to charge Al Capone with the murder of Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin, so he’s released from prison after one (1) day.

Aimee Semple McPherson, evangelist-extraordinaire, will be investigated by the L.A. County Grand Jury for perjury at the hearing into her alleged kidnapping. Witnesses have been called who saw her on her sex romp in Carmel when she was supposed to be tied up in a cabin in Mexico.

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Today -100: July 29, 1926: There’s a sucker list born every minute

The Poincaré government postpones submitting the war debt agreements with the US and Britain to parliament until at least the fall.

Abyssinia (Ethiopia) protests to the League of Nations, of which it is a member, against the agreement between Britain and Italy dividing Abyssinia into spheres of influence, giving Britain the right to build a dam on Lake Tsana to divert water to the Sudan and Italy the right to build a railroad to connect its colonies in Somaliland and Eritrea. Abyssinia, which is a real country and everything, was not invited to participate in the negotiations.

Charles Greenhaus, the former “Boy Wizard of Wall Street,” is on trial for fraud, as his custom (and will be for decades to come, really he got caught so many times), with his partner Henry Griffin for a Florida land scheme. He solicited people on a “sucker list” he’d purchased containing 38,000 names, at 2¢ a name, of people who’d fallen for various fraudulent or at least failed stocks in the past. He offered to take their worthless stocks in exchange for Florida land, which would need just a little  extra cash to pay off its mortgage so it could be sold to eager buyers who were definitely real and willing to pay large amounts... Greenhaus & Griffen will be found guilty and sentenced to 2 years and 1 year respectively.

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Today -100: July 28, 1926: Americans in Paris

Gen. Lincoln Andrews, head of federal Prohibition enforcement, has been in Britain for a while working out an agreement, the terms of which are not known and may be a, shhh, secret, for Britain to help prevent liquor-smuggling by doing things like  making sure smuggling vessels don’t acquire British registry, allowing US patrol boats to wander around the Bahamas, and exchanging information.

Coolidge blames the hostility recently shown to American tourists in Paris and elsewhere partly on the Americans themselves. I KNOW, American tourists abroad being boorish and rude!

The Mexican government plans to seize any churches whose priests abandon them, on the theory that the property was only ever loaned to the Church by its real owner, the state.

Texas Gov. Miriam Ferguson’s opponents are trying to force her to keep her promise that she’d resign if she lost the D. primary. She is threatening that if they don’t shut up about it, she’ll also reverse her decision not to take part in a run-off primary.

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Today -100: July 27, 1926: Of shaws, assassination-magnets, and dark bread

At his 70th birthday dinner, George Bernard Shaw gives the speech which the postmaster general refused to let the BBC broadcast because Shaw wouldn’t promise not to be controversial. His subject: censorship.

He comes out in favor of the Labour Party for, I think, the first time.

Robert Todd Lincoln, eldest son of Honest Abe, dies at 82. He was secretary of war 1881-5 and ambassador to Great Britain 1889-93, later becoming president of the Pullman Company. He rejected many offers to run for higher office. While he was not, as the NYT asserts, at Ford’s Theatre during his father’s assassination, he was a witness to the assassination of Pres. Garfield and was close to McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition when he was assassinated. Dude was just bad luck, is what I’m saying. An amateur astronomer, he built his own personal observatory. 

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson will keep her pledge to resign if she lost the Democratic primary, which she has. Or will she? I thought she was supposed to resign immediately, but she’s calling a special session of the Legislature in September and talking about maybe quitting Nov. 1 if she’s completed all her work. 

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: July 26, 1926: Of militias, illegal fractional meetings, and controversy

The Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, a pro-Weimar militia composed mostly of veterans, previously unarmed, will now arm its members with rifles, a few hundred thousand of them. The government says it has no objections. France might have some.

Grigory Zinoviev is also ousted from the Politburo, and Mikhail Lashevich is fired as assistant war minister for their “illegal conspirative” opposition campaign, including an “illegal fractional meeting” in the woods outside Moscow (which to be fair is exactly what they were engaged in).

George Bernard Shaw’s 70th birthday will be celebrated tomorrow by a dinner chaired by Ramsay MacDonald. It was supposed to be broadcast on the BBC, but Postmaster General Sir William Mitchell-Thomson refuses permission unless Shaw promises not to say anything “controversial.” Shaw responds that everything he says is highly controversial.

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Today -100: July 25, 1926: I will offer him a drink and take one with him even if it gags me

Grigory Zinoviev is ousted as chair of the Comintern after opposing Stalin. Who will have him executed in about a decade.

Col. Ned Green, Prohibition Administrator for Northern California and Nevada, is suspended for, among other things, holding parties in his office in which seized alcohol was served. Government agents go to his hotel room to seize his alcohol, although he points out that some of it is pre-Volstead and it isn’t illegal to have booze in your home and offer it to your guests. In fact, he claims not to know who keeps sending him all that liquor, it just kinda shows up. “If any friend or stranger calls on me I will offer him a drink and take one with him even if it gags me.” US Attorney George Hatfield says he’ll indict Green.

The new Poincaré Cabinet unveils its secret plan to stabilize French government finances: ask people to pay their taxes a bit before they’re actually due.

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Today -100: July 24, 1926: Unexcessive aspirations are the best kind of aspirations

Mussolini says Italy must expand “culturally and economically beyond her borders,” “but our imperialism presents no threat to the world’s peace” because surely no nation “would want to assume the grave responsibility of obstructing the achievement of such legitimate and, in reality, such unexcessive aspirations.”  “Our colonial aspirations do not constitute a menace for any one.” He plans to fulfill these aspirations through deals with other European colonial nations; he makes literally no references to the natives of these potential colonies and whatever their aspirations might be. He says the US resembles the Fascist State more than liberal democratic European nations: “Popular sovereignty is tempered by strong governmental authority. Universal suffrage elects the Government, but cannot interfere with its work”.

Raymond Poincaré succeeds in forming what could be called a government of national union. His cabinet includes 6 former primes minister and a broad range of parties; tomorrow the NYT will describe it as “largely composed of men who have in turn thrown each other out of office because of their opposition to the other’s proposals.”

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Today -100: July 23, 1926: Of tourists, free rides, beating roulette, and fly balls

French resentment against having to pay war debts is being taken out in Paris on British and American tourists, with jeering and the occasional beating. I KNOW, Parisians being rude to tourists!

The French deputies who yesterday asked Pres. Doumergue for a government of national union tell the man he chose to lead that government, Raymond Poincaré, no, not you, we didn’t mean you. The largest party in the Chamber, the Radical Socialists, thinks one of their own should be PM. Poincaré wants to reduce the size of the cabinet from something like 19 to something like 8 so that it can maybe get some things done for a change.

The Italian Fascist regime wants to popularize civil aviation, so it’s offering anyone who hasn’t previously ridden in an aeroplane a free ride.

Margaret Bondfield (Labour), who has been an MP before, is elected in the Wallsend by-election. Parliament now has 6 women MPs.

Prince Nikolai Massalski of Russia, in prison in Berlin awaiting trial for passing bad checks, has not wasted his time behind bars, inventing a sure-fire system for beating roulette, but the judges won’t let him out to use it to win enough money to cover his checks.

Babe Ruth catches a ball dropped from an airplane, which is a first. It takes a few tries before a ball isn’t blown off course on its way down.

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Today -100: July 22, 1926: It didn’t.

Édouard Herriot is defeated in the Chamber of Deputies, his government having lasted, what, 2 days? After he hands in his notice, 302 deputies petition Pres. Gaston Doumergue to form a government of national union, which they promise to actually support for once. So he asks Raymond Poincaré to do that. The government is seriously running out of funds and the condition of the franc is such that stores are closing rather than have to sell stuff for them.

Stephen Golombo of Paterson, NJ hangs himself because he thought his death would bring the end of the world.

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Today -100: July 21, 1926: Live your life so your obituary doesn’t contain the words “monster of iniquity”

Felix Dzerzhinsky, 48, head of the Soviet secret police under its various names, dies of a heart attack after giving a long speech to the Bolshevik Central Committee. He died doing what he loved, denouncing enemies of the state.

An unsigned Chicago Tribune editorial alliteratively titled “Pink Powder Puffs,” complains that the men’s room of a public ballroom has a face powder dispenser. “In a men’s washroom! Homo Americanus! Why didn’t someone quietly drown Rudolph Guglielmo, alias Valentino, years ago? ... It is time for a matriarchy if the male of the species allows such a thing to persist. Better a rule by masculine women than by effeminate men.” Valentino, who is genuinely deeply upset, challenges the author to a duel, maybe boxing or wrestling, since more lethal forms of dueling are sadly illegal in the US. The author will not respond.

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Today -100: July 20, 1926: Doing the best with the material left

Édouard Herriot succeeds in forming a cabinet, the 14th since 1920, which will surely last a super-long time. It’s not the government of aaalllll the parties he promised (not all deputies from even his own Radical Party back it), and most of the major French leaders remain outside. The NYT’s very sceptical Edwin James notes that Herriot’s invitation was refused by Poincaré, Briand, Tardieu, Marin, and Barthou: “Therefore Herriot has probably done the best he could with the material left.”  It doesn’t inspire confidence in the financial sector and the franc continues its plunge. Radio stations are prohibited from broadcasting exchange rates and market prices, to prevent the spreading of panic.

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Today -100: July 19, 1926: In which is revealed what is the greatest threat to the republic

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho), hoping to ride a dry wave into the White House (to use a terrible metaphor), says the only way to take Prohibition out of politics is to enforce it. Attempts to repeal it, he says, are really attacks on the Constitution and nullification and are the greatest threat to the republic.

Édouard Herriot will attempt to form a government consisting of aaalllll the parties. He’s having some difficulty accomplishing that.

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson is still leaving almost all her campaigning for re-election to her husband, impeached former governor James F., who is giving her credit for removing evolution from school textbooks and says Attorney Gen. Dan Moody “runs with the Ku Klux Klan at night” (he does not, but James wants to keep the Klan issue before the public so he can use it as a cudgel when he runs for US senator).

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Today -100: July 18, 1926: Boycotting ice cream? Ice cream?

The French Chamber of Deputies refuses Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux’s demand for fiscal dictatorial powers, 288-243. Aristide Briand’s Cabinet resigns. After formally resigning at the Presidential Palace, Briand says “Now I am a free man and I am going fishing tomorrow.”

The archbishop of Mexico City and others call for an economic boycott to start when the Calles decree comes into effect on the 31st. They are to refrain from coaches, fruit, ice cream, movies, lottery tickets, and non-religious schools, use as little electricity as possible, etc. etc.

Lithuania’s newish Populist-Socialist government lifts the 4-year-old state of siege, ends censorship of the mails, and releases all political prisoners.

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Today -100: July 17, 1926: Of rapes and marbles

Italy’s Fascist press is pointing to the demands of French Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux and Belgium’s King Albert for dictatorial powers to deal with the fall of their respective francs as demonstrating the failure of parliamentarism and the rise of fascist methods.

The Kenya Legislative Council passes a law imposing the death penalty for assaults on white women by native men. Black men can still rape black women with close to impunity, the Archdeacon of Kavirondo notes in letter to the London Times; last year a magistrate refused to convict in one case, saying rape was so common it was almost a tribal custom.

Alexander Philadelpheus, the most prominent Greek archaeologist, is campaigning for the British Museum to return the Elgin Marbles.

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Today -100: July 16, 1926: Which is the best kind of dictator

Albert, King of the Belgians, is “expected to be a good-natured dictator”.

The Aimee Semple McPherson grand jury hearings figure it out:  a gas station attendant in Salinas identifies her and Kenneth Ormiston, a former operator for her temple’s radio station, as having gotten gas 11 days after her alleged kidnapping. From there, they checked into a San Luis Obispo hotel (no, not the Madonna Inn, that didn’t exist yet) under false names. Other witnesses place her at locations that don’t fit her narrative.

I.F. Andrews, who was the drummer boy who played taps at Lincoln’s funeral, dies. After the war, he became a professional musician.

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Today -100: July 15, 1926: Duels!

The number of duels has been increasing in Fascist Italy. Yesterday or the day before, Mussolini’s brother Arnoldo challenged some general. Today, Luigi de Alfonso, honorary consul-general of the Fascist militia, which is a rather odd title, fights former under-secretary to the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs Giuseppe Caradonna with sabers, getting rather slashed up.

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Today -100: July 14, 1926: Of war debt and foolish notions

A new dictator I was not expecting: Albert, King of the Belgians, is granted powers by the Chamber of Representatives to legislate by decree to deal with inflation, taxes, really anything economy-related, for six months. Even Socialist senators support this.

France and Britain come to an agreement on the former’s war debt to the latter. It’s quite lenient, cancelling 3/5 of France’s nominal debt, possibly Chancellor Winston Churchill setting an example for the US to follow with respect to Britain’s war debt to it. Britain did reject France’s attempt to link its annual payments (for 62 years) to the reparations it receives from Germany, though Churchill does say that if Germany defaults, he’ll reconsider France’s payments.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. refuses to let press photographers take pictures of his sons for fear it would put “foolish notions into their heads.”

Germany bans The Battleship Potemkin for being historically inaccurate in portraying Tsarist forces shooting innocent civilians during the 1905 Revolution. 

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Today -100: July 13, 1926: Of shells and Bells

In Dover, NJ, near the area affected by the ammunition depot explosions, a man allowed to return to his home (thought to be outside the danger zone) to pick up clothing finds a 60-pound shell which fell down the chimney and came to rest, without exploding, in his stove.

Elvia Carrillo Puerto stands for the Mexican Congress, loses. It seems likely that women aren’t legally allowed to hold office anyway. She had been elected to the Yucatán Congress in 1923, where women’s suffrage was enacted that year, but left the state in a bit of a hurry after her brother, the governor, was assassinated in 1924. Women got the vote national elections in 1953 (effective with the 1955 elections).

Chief movie censor Will Hays introduces a policy that no movie shall encourage “the slightest disrespect for law,” especially, well you can guess which law in particular. So, no scenes of drinking or liquor-manufacturing, and scenes of intoxication only if absolutely necessary for the plot.

Gertrude Bell,  archaeologist, “Orientalist,” adviser to British governments on Arab matters, mountain-climber, adviser to King Faisal, and a founder of the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League, dies in Baghdad at 57 of an overdose of sleeping pills. Here’s a passage in her obit I could have done without: “Despite her adventuresome life, she remained charmingly feminine and old-fashioned and avoided publicity. No matter how strenuous her days of exploring were, it was said of her that she always dressed for dinner in a Rue de la Paix gown.”

Publisher Henry Holt & Co. admits removing chapters on evolution from the textbook Biology for Beginners in editions sent to Texas, in compliance with state rules.

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Today -100: July 12, 1926: Of boom booms and the ruin of France

Secretary of War Dwight Davis inspects the Lake Denmark, NJ ammunition depot, occasionally taking cover during ongoing explosions and wandering closer than seems prudent to unexploded shells near raging fires. He opines that when they rebuild (and locals have some opinions about that), depot buildings should be a little further apart.

In Paris 20,000 veterans of the Great War, led by cripples and the blind, march to protest the war debt settlement with the US, laying a marble plaque at the statue of George Washington in a subtle reminder of all the aid the French gave the US back in the day. The plaque reads in part, “After the deceptions of peace the proposed debt settlement would consecrate the ruin of France and the loss of her independence.” The government forbade the parade but couldn’t stop it.

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Today -100: July 11, 1926: A little song, a little dance...

Someone poisoned VP Charles Dawes’s new dog Merigo in Evanston. Not directed at him personally but part of a rash of dog-poisonings.

The Lake Denmark, NJ ammunition depot, the Navy’s largest, blows up real good. A lightning strike sets off millions of pounds of explosives, killing 19. The fire, which also destroys many buildings, is ongoing and the explosions, armor-piercing shells and the like, will continue for days. Windows were blown out miles away.

Similarly, a soda fountain explodes in Binghamton in a freak carbonation accident; two may die.

A Ku Klux Klan children’s home opens in Mannsville, NY.

Headline of the Day -100 For a Story I Definitely Won’t Be Reading:

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Today -100: July 10, 1926: Coup coup coup

Portugal has a coup against the coup government which came to power in the coup in May. President Gen. Gomes da Costa is arrested and will be banished to the Azores. He precipitated this coup by firing his ministers of foreign affairs, the colonies, and the interior; and several other ministers resigned in sympathy.

Some dude in clerical garb has been selling tickets to the Aimee Semple McPherson grand jury hearings for two bucks. There is, of course, no such thing as a ticket to a grand jury hearing.

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Today -100: July 9, 1926: Of radio, repeated moral delinquencies, haunted palaces, ideologies, embarrassed jurors, garrottings, and sheik nipples

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.

Do you dare gaze upon my nipples?

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Today -100: July 8, 1926: Harpies preying on the peaceful, decent community are the worst kind of harpies

A Passaic, New Jersey “Citizens’ Committee” plans a campaign to counter the propaganda of the textile strikers (24 weeks into the strike), which claims that the workers live in poverty, the police are brutal, and the judges tyrannical. Can’t imagine where they got that idea. They describe strike leader Albert Weisbrod et al as “harpies preying on the peaceful, decent community” of Passaic and, naturally, as communists. Infant mortality is relatively low!, they brag. Weisbrod responds that the Committee members are charlatans, Ku Klux Klan members and “labor haters who have never raised their fingers to help the workers of Passaic and yet have fattened on the bodies of the workers for many years.”

Gen. Lincoln C. Andrews won’t step down as the head of federal Prohibition enforcement after all.

French Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux’s request for Parliament to grant him special powers to deal with the franc is not going over well.

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Today -100: July 7, 1926: Potatoes or elections?

As part of its economy program, the Italian government wants people to eat potatoes instead of pasta.

Oh, and it’s canceling elections for every level of government. 

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Today -100: July 6, 1926: In which is revealed what creates the character of the nation

At the Sesquicentennial Exposition, Pres. Coolidge says it is not “the enactment but the observance of laws that creates the character of the nation.” When you hear a statement like that and know that it’s about Prohibition even though he doesn’t say it’s about Prohibition, maybe you’ve just got a bad law on your hands. Coolidge is criticized for downplaying the role in the writing of the Declaration of Independence of Thomas Jefferson, whose ideas Coolidge says came from preachers.

I could  swear yesterday the NYT was describing the Ku Klux Klan’s Klorero (meeting or rally or  key party or something) on Long Island as a bust, but today 3,000 kluxers parade through Mineola, wearing the Klan bathrobe but not the mask, in oh so grudging obedience to New York law. Onlookers throw coins into flags held horizontally by women kluxers. Floats represent the Spirit of ‘76 and A Little Red Schoolhouse™, with the words “Keep the Bible in the Public Schools.” Cause you have to use something to prop up that uneven table leg, I guess.

A French mechanic invents a flying bicycle.

Pope Pius asks Catholics all over the world to pray for Mexico to stop persecuting Catholics on August 1st, which is the festival of... St. Peter-in-Chains (I don’t even want to know).

Mussolini follows the economy program he’s imposing on Italy by canceling his plans to visit parts of the country and colonies, calling them luxuries which can’t be afforded just now.

The BBC, which has begun John Reith’s task of deciding how English should be spoken, considers the voices of 90% of stage comedians unsuitable for broadcast. It does approve of the voices of the Prince of Wales and George Bernard Shaw, who read out one of his plays. If this makes you wonder what GBS sounded like, here’s a quite clear recording from 1929:

I’d call that accent Mid-Irish-Sea.

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Today -100: July 5, 1926: Of swimming Swedes, medicine balls, and assassinations

Even though the Republicans correctly fear losing House and Senate seats in November, Coolidge is likely to refrain from campaigning altogether.

Coolidge’s 54th birthday was on the 4th of July, by the way.

There have been a lot of drownings in Sweden of late (c.340 per year), so they’re taking harsh measures to force everyone to learn to swim: no teachers who can’t swim, no students (the article says boys, could that be true?) passing exams without also passing swim exams, no government officials who can’t swim, etc.

Crowds crowd (as crowds will do) the beaches at Coney Island and Atlantic City for the 4th. Gov. Al Smith visits Coney and “played with a medicine ball on the beach for a while.” I’ll bet he did, I’ll bet he did. Rather embarrassingly, the NYT names bathers who had to be rescued from drowning.

French police drop charges against 2 Spaniards they’d arrested for allegedly planning to assassinate King Alfonso, but retain charges for carrying false passports and real guns. Feels like there’s more to this story.

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Today -100: July 4, 1926: Your sister wears knickers

Mexico issues the Calles Decree, which confiscates church property; bans non-Mexican-born ministers from doing minister stuff; bans non-secular teaching and religious primary schools; bans proselytizing to minors; bans ministers from meeting together, in public or private; bans them wearing religious outfits or symbols when out and about; gives the government ownership of all the churches; bans ministers from complaining publicly about any of this and religious newspapers can’t comment on any of this. Plus a whole lot more. It goes into effect on the 31st.

Wayne Wheeler of the Anti-Saloon League begs the Senate committee investigating election spending not to release the names of the League’s donors.

London sees its first suffragist parade since the war, demanding the voting age be equalized between the sexes. Emmeline Pankhurst, Lady Rhondda, and MP Ellen Wilkinson participate.

Charles Ponzi, who was on the run but was evidently captured without it making the NYT, telegraphs Pres. Coolidge asking for clemency and to be deported to Italy, which he calls a “compromise.” He’s also cabled Mussolini for help.

Headline of the Day -100: 

In a “former” saloon in the Bronx, the victim casts aspersions on women who wear knickers. The Tennesseehoovian says My sister wears knickers and she is a good girl! It escalates from there.

Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the Polish dictator, was reported last week as resting in a sanatorium, but now says that was a ruse to cover for his carrying out an inspection of border troops. It’s unclear why such a ruse was required.

The French government rejects a request (it is not said from whom) to send the Mona Lisa to the Sesquicentennial Exhibition. 

Greek dictator Theodoros Pangalos proved unable to dictate the length of women’s skirts. His decree (issued January, I think) required skirts to be a maximum of 35 centimeters from the ground, with punishment falling on the father or husband of the offender. The decree wasn’t popular among women or indeed the police, who didn’t want to be in the skirt-measuring business, so 2 women skirt-measurers were hired. Then the cops arrested a woman who turned out to be the daughter of a Court of Appeal judge. Her trial was so unpopular that Pangalos has now rescinded the decree.

At the 2nd Nazi Party congress, the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung are renamed the Hitlerjugend.

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Today -100: July 3, 1926: Of vares, Rothschilds, and governors-generalses

Gen. Lincoln Andrews, the federal Dry Czar, threatens to resign if Congress doesn’t pass the laws he demands giving him way more powers. Congress rejected his plan to hire retired military officers for prohibition work (without affecting their retirement pay). The NYT says this is because congresscritters considered those jobs patronage fodder, but I can think of other reasons not to staff a policing agency with military types.

The Senate Rules Committee proposes banning any senator whose campaign spent more than $25,000 with their knowledge, including in the primary. This is aimed at Rep. William Scott Vare, Republican candidate for the Senate from Pennsylvania.

The French Chamber of Deputies refuses to seat Baron Maurice de Rothschild as deputy for the Hautes-Alpes Department because he spent too much money in his election in 1924. He’s been attending the Chamber since that election but without being allowed to vote. The campaign to unseat him was led by Communists. He’ll be re-elected anyway in October’s elections.

Governor General of Canada, Julian “Bungo” Byng dissolves Parliament, as he refused to do for Mackenzie king last week, after the Meighen government failed that confidence vote yesterday. Byng is criticized for letting many bills which were passed by Parliament lapse without royal assent, including 44 divorce bills. Mackenzie King and the Liberals will fight the election partly on the question of Canadian autonomy and Byng’s interference (Byng’s term of office expires shortly anyway).

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Today -100: July 2, 1926: Of tigers & confidence

NY Gov. Al Smith evidently has his own zoo at the governor’s mansion, including an increasingly aggressive “Tammany Tiger” which he can’t persuade any real zoo to take. So he has it shot.

In other news, Al Smith can go fuck himself.

The very new Canadian government of Arthur Meighen loses a vote of confidence in Parliament by one vote.

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Today -100: July 1, 1926: Women must fight their own battles

NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith, asked if he’ll be running for re-election in 4 months, says, “I am not going to think anything more about that for a while. ... This is vacation time.” Tammany Hall is considering Robert F. Wagner of the NY Supreme Court as a replacement if Smith doesn’t run.

Spain’s King Alfonso and Queen Victoria have been vacationing in France, where police thwart a plot to assassinate him.

So what happened to the car in which the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie were assassinated in 1914? Well, it was still in Sarajevo when the Great War broke out, so Yugoslavia wound up in possession of it and for a time the governor of Bosnia used it but after some incidents he decided it was haunted. A merchant bought it but also decided it was haunted and was driving to a possible buyer when it turned over and killed him. It then passed to a series of people and has now been bought for pennies by a Dr. Ragibkavara. Are you as skeptical about this story as I am? Good. (Update: Right, none of that is true. None of it.)

George Bernard Shaw, who has rejected invitations to address meetings in support of reducing the voting age for British women from 30 to 21, has his secretary respond, “Mr. Shaw desires me to say that women must fight their own battles. He is not to be lured into the ridiculous position of their male champion.” I respect that position but... imagine the speech he would give.

Fascist newspapers in Italy are praising the government order to reduce all newspapers to 6 pages, saying most journalism is just a waste of paper. Augusto Turati, Secretary General of the Fascist Party, says each province will have a single newspaper, “in which will be published the party’s orders, and the political acts of Fascism will be briefly illustrated. All the rest of the space will be devoted to things which are being constructed and work which is being carried out.” 

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Today -100: June 30, 1926: Headses or tails

Mussolini, worried about Italy’s balance of trade and determined to increase Italian production, orders the work day increased from 8 hours to 9. He also bans the building of more expensive houses for a year and cafes, bars, night clubs etc. indefinitely. Gasoline for cars will be mixed with wine. The newspapers which he hasn’t already banned will be restricted to 6 pages.

The Italian public prosecutor’s office finds no evidence that the Socialist former deputy Tito Zaniboni’s attempt to assassinate Mussolini last year was instigated by the Freemasons.

The Treasury will mint a Sesquicentennial half-dollar coin with portraits of Coolidge and Washington, the first time a living president will appear on a US coin. That was illegal then like it’s illegal now. I had assumed Mr. C. and Mr. W. would appear on opposite sides, but actually...

That really is terrible. Also, the Sesquicentennial celebrates the birth of the nation at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and neither Washington nor Coolidge signed the Declaration of Independence. The Liberty Bell appears on the other side. 1 million of these things were minted, to be sold at the Exposition; 859,000 went unsold and were melted down.

New York Democrats are carefully scrutinizing the speech Gov. Al Smith gave at a dinner to determine whether he might be convinced to run for re-election 4 months from now.

Coolidge denies saying fishing is a sport only for youths.

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Today -100: June 29, 1926: Of Wing-Dings, vets, whips, and ironsides

The Governor General of Canada, Julian Byng, known, naturally, as “Bungo,” refuses Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s request to dissolve Parliament and call new elections. He is the first and last governor general to reject such a request. The most recent election was only last October and Byng thinks Arthur Meighen (C) should be allowed to try to form a government before there’s resort to another election. So King and his Cabinet, facing a motion of confidence over bribe-taking in the Customs Department and other scandals, resign. Meighen will try to form a Conservative government backed by only a plurality in Parliament (King’s Liberals have been ruling in a shaky coalition with the Progressives).

This is called the King–Byng Affair, or the King–Byng Wing-Ding. Those wacky Canadians.

The Senate passes a bill amending the World War Veterans’ act to provide hospitalization benefits for women veterans and nurses from the Spanish-American War in private hospitals, since VA hospitals are men-only.

The Educational Committee of the Prussian Diet rejects a Socialist motion to abolish corporal punishment in schools. Failing that, they tried to abolish it for girls. Then for 6-year-olds. But Prussians love them some whipping.

During the filming of “Old Ironsides,” a Wallace Beery film (with Boris Karloff in what I assume is a small role) which I haven’t seen but which is available on Tubi, a cannon explodes, destroying the masts, sending six extras falling to the deck. One is dead.

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Today -100: June 28, 1926: Wait, and hear me out, what if we use the Navy to protect the negro’s ballot?

Gen. Manuel Gomes da Costa, the leader of last month’s coup in Portugal, declares himself supreme ruler. All political prisoners will be exiled.

The NAACP launches a $1m fund to fight Jim Crow laws. NAACP Exec. Sec. James Weldon Johnson says “The federal government will use a navy to prevent a man from taking  a drink, but will not empower a deputy marshal to protect the negro’s ballot.”

The manufacture of horsewhips dropped 58.5% in 1925 over 1923.

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Today -100: June 27, 1926: Of gold, kluxers v. gypsies, and parole

Incoming French Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux sacks Georges Robineau, the governor of the Banque de France who opposed the use of France’s gold reserves to defend the franc. Caillaux says Robineau had often expressed a desire to retire; Robineau denies this.

Austrian Socialist MPs stalk out of Parliament to protest it electing Anton Rintelen, the former governor of Styria, as minister of education, calling him a fascist, which is not wrong.

A group in Klan kostumes shoot up a Gypsy camp in Westchester Cty, New York.

New York criminals are hastily pleading guilty to get into Sing Sing before Wednesday, when parole laws change.

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Today -100: June 26, 1926: Atlantis located, without even the benefit of Google Maps

Republicans are in disarray over Congress’s failure to pass a bill to aid farmers. Coolidge supports the Fess plan, involving aid to a cooperative marketing bureau, which is dead in the water.

German archaeologist Prof. Paul Borchardt says he’s figured out where Atlantis was: the Sahara Desert in Tunisia. It sank in an earthquake. Before that, it went to war with Egypt or something, dunno, stopped reading.

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Today -100: June 25, 1926: Let the males have one place in the country where they can live in peace

Spain arrests 30 lawyers, journalists, army officers, etc. Evidently a conspiracy has been uncovered to... issue a manifesto calling for the restoration of constitutional rights.

The Senate Campaign Fund Investigating Committee questions Pittsburgh Police Superintendent Peter Paul Walsh, who admits having ordered detectives to get out the vote for John Stuchell Fisher and George Pepper, the Republican candidates for governor & US Senate respectively. And by “admits,” I mean Walsh lies about it until the letter he wrote to the Detective Bureau inspector is read out to him. And when I say “wrote,” he insists, “I did not write it Senator. The stenographer wrote it, but I signed it.” “And you dictated it?” “Yes sir.” (The letter, by the way, was stolen from the Detective Bureau by some whistleblower and delivered to the Committee). He claims neither candidates’ campaigns asked him to issue that order. The Committee has also been examining the large amounts of money the Anti-Saloon League inserted into the primaries.

The British House of Lords rejects by a vote of 125 to 80 a measure to allow peeresses to sit in the Lords.  “Let the males have one place in the country where they can live in peace,” exclaims Baron Banbury. Lord Cecil notes that the claim that women aren’t up to the physical strains of being a Member of Parliament hardly applies to the Lords.

Britain’s oldest general is Sir George Higginson, age 100, Crimean War vet.

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Today -100: June 24, 1926: Maybe someone got him a beard for his birthday

Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson reappears. Believed to have drowned in the ocean a month ago, she claims to have actually been kidnapped and drugged and held for ransom in a shack in Mexico, then escaped when her kidnappers left her by herself. There are plenty of details I won’t go into, but there’s a good chance this is total horseshit.

Aristide Briand forms a government. The finance minister will be Joseph Caillaux for the umpteenth time.

Italy threatens to stop participating in the League of Nations unless anti-Fascist meetings are banned in Geneva. Swiss Foreign Minister Giuseppe Motta points out that a recent incident was caused by Fascists trying to disrupt an anti-Fash meeting.

Edward, Prince of Wales turns 32. “At the same age King Edward [VII] had a beard and was a father.” He goes to a horse show, as was the custom.

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Today -100: June 23, 1926: In the long run

Philadelphia Mayor Freeland Kendrick, who is also president of the Sesquicentennial Exposition, denies the Ku Klux Klan a parade license and bans them from using the Sesquicentennial Auditorium. Kleagle Paul Winter says “They will pay in the long run, all right.”

Someone else who won’t be participating: Bishop Joseph Berry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who resigns from the Exposition committee because it will be open on Sundays such as July 4th.

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Today -100: June 22, 1926: Of taxes & budgets

Coolidge says it will be a while before taxes can be reduced again, even as budget cuts, with more budget cuts planned, are increasing the size of the surplus, because who knows what could happen by 1928. I mean, who even knows?

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Today -100: June 21, 1926: Gross ingratitude is the worst kind of ingratitude

Édouard Herriot fails to form a new French government; Aristide Briand gets another chance.

There’s a “riot” in Garfield, New Jersey, where the (Passaic-area) textile strike is in its 21st week. And by riot I mean cops attack a crowd that refuses their order to disperse. The crowd gets especially riled when the cops arrest a woman with 3 children, including a baby. The Garfield police have been recruiting special policemen, but the majority refuse to take their oath upon finding that the pay is only $23 a week.

The German referendum to confiscate the property of former ruling families in Prussia and other states (4 kings, 6 grand dukes, 5 dukes, 7 princes, etc) receives 96% of the vote, but the turnout is only 39%; 50% is required. So the monarchists win by boycotting the vote. A private letter from Pres. Paul von Hindenburg “leaked,” calling the measure “a deplorable lack of traditional feelings and an act of gross ingratitude.” Many people thought his intervention unseemly.

British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin’s son Oliver comes out as a Spiritist. He’s seen ghosts and everything.

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Today -100: June 20, 1926: Makin’ beer

Rep. Fiorello La Guardia makes some beer in his D.C. office by combining two legal products, a near-beer and a malt extract, to create beer with a 2.84% alcohol content, and giving it out. Experts pronounce the beer fine, but the Prohibition Unit says you’d get sick well before you got inebriated, something about solids.

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Today -100: June 19, 1926: In which is revealed what offends the moral sense

Stuff I should have been talking about earlier: The Pennsylvania elections this month, specifically the Republican gubernatorial and US Senate primaries, which in this very Republican state are the only ones that matter, were tremendously corrupt and tremendously expensive. They’re being investigated by the Senate. Gifford Pinchot, term-limited out of the governor’s office, lost the Republican primary for US Senate to Rep. William Scott Vare, but I’m sure there’ll be no hard feelings. American Federation of Labour Pres. William Green is pissed that someone forged a letter of him endorsing John Stuchell Fisher for governor; the Fisher campaign paid for an ad in the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times featuring the forgery.

A NYT editorial thinks the candidates (at least Pepper & Vare) were unaware of what was going on, placing the blame on the donors: “what offends the moral sense [is] the spirit in which rich men set out to win a political contest by means of long purses. ... the callous indifference, the sublime unconsciousness of doing anything wrong ... The real Pennsylvania scandal is the fact that Pennsylvania did not seem to know that it was doing anything scandalous.”

The leader of last month’s coup in Portugal, Gen. Manuel Gomes da Costa, fires Adm. José Mendes Cabeçadas, who the coup leaders appointed president & prime minister. Gomes da Costa will take both posts as well as minister of war. Martial law is declared.

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Today -100: June 18, 1926: Excessive offensive American propaganda is the worst kind of propaganda

Spanish Foreign Minister José de Yanguas says Spain will withdraw from the League of Nations since it turned out to be “an organization of war.”

Brown University is no longer Baptist; trustees and the U. president will no longer be required to be Baptist.

Australian censors ban King Vidor’s film The Big Parade for “excessive offensive American propaganda.”

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Today -100: June 17, 1926: Not everyone loves a parade

More voters in Ridgewood, New Jersey cast ballots in a referendum on a “mutt ordinance” which drops the inoculation requirement but bans unvaccinated dogs outside unless muzzled than voted in the congressional, Assembly or coroner races. The mutt ordinance passes. In other news, “mutt ordinance” is just fun to say. Mutt ordinance mutt ordinance mutt ordinance.

The Soviet Union has supposedly made a grant of $10,000 to the Pasteur Institute in French Guinea for an attempt at artificial hybridization of the human and anthropoid species, to prove evolution. Um, okay. This news comes from Detroit lawyer Howell England of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism (if you were wondering what comes after Alcoholics Anonymous and the American Automobile Association), who says Dr. F. G. (Francis Graham) Crookshank, author of The Mongol in Our Midst, thinks orangutans can breed with the yellow race, gorillas with the black race, and chimps with the white race, producing fertile hybrids.

Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City refuses the Ku Klux Klan a parade permit. He says their demonstrations usually lead to rioting. Mayor Harvey Kistler of Niles, Ohio also refuses to issue kluxers a parade permit.

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Today -100: June 16, 1926: Had I fired I should not have missed

American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, who lived most of her life in France, dies at 82. Do the words “created a type of sturdy wholesomeness and naturalness” make you eager to seek out her work?

Another death of note: Catherine Evans, 91 or possibly 81, an actress who played the maid in “Our American Cousin” the night Lincoln was shot and therefore witnessed the assassination..

French Prime Minister Aristide Briand and his Cabinet resign, as was the custom (this was his 9th or 11th or something premiership, who can keep count), because of the franc’s fall.

The Coast Guard fires on the yacht of millionaire Arthur Curtiss James (the NYT identifies him as a former commodore, without noting that his commodorial service was in the New York Yacht Club) in the Long Island Sound, mistaking it in the fog for a rum-runner.

Not sure when the duel between Poland’s former PM Count Aleksander Skrzyński and Gen. Count Stanisław Szeptycki changed from the planned sword fight to pistols at 15 paces. The general fires first, missing, but Skrzyński refuses to shoot. “I shall not resort to this stupid, inconclusive and barbaric method of settling a quarrel which has been forced upon me.” He slightly undercuts this by adding “Had I fired I should not have missed. But I don’t care to do so.” By the way, the general tried to avoid the duel which he provoked, but was forced to go through with it by a “court of honor,” which is a thing.

The estate of the late Lucien Warner is much reduced because of write-offs as the result of the decline in popularity of the product his firm manufactured, corsets.

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Today -100: June 15, 1926: Boy, there’s a Brazilian joke here somewhere

Headline of the Day -100:

Some dude named Gary, probably. 

Brazil does indeed resign from the League of Nations, effective in two years by LoN rules.

Catherine Scott, who planned to raise funds for her husband’s insanity defense by fasting in a glass cage, is stopped by the police under a law forbidding the exhibition of the results of crime.

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Today -100: June 14, 1926: Of army chiefs, falling ceilings and parades

Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who led that coup in Poland, cements his power-behind-the-throne position, being granted the status of Commander in Chief of the Armies for life rather than War Minister, so not removable by the government or Parliament or anybody.

The White House roof is in danger of falling down, Coolidge’s church’s plaster is falling down, and the movie theater in which that church is now holding services also has pieces come crashing down during services. Someone is trying to tell Coolidge something.

At the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia (have we heard Trump say the word semiquincentennial yet?), the governors of the original 13 colonies will meet today and watch a parade. But is there even a cage match?

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