Today -100: July 17, 1910: Of Crippen, black teachers, and suffering noses

The NYT’s London correspondent notes with surprise that Scotland Yard is actually talking to the press about the Crippen case, contrary to its usual tight-lipped policy. Why, “before long it is likely that even telephones may be installed.” Scotland Yard didn’t have telephones in 1910?

There is a bit of a fuss in Elizabeth, NJ over a black teacher who was just hired by the school district to teach a class of white students. Several members of the Board of Education said they didn’t know she was colored when they hired her.

An Association of Noses That Suffer is formed in Paris to work for the abolition of smelly things like tanneries, patchouli, automobiles and French people. I’m not proud of that joke, I’m really not, but some things in life and blogging are simply too powerful to be resisted.

The logic is impeccable

John McCain twitters (but I repeat myself):

Cap

The new cap seems to be maybe possibly containing the BP spill. Well, as Lizzie will tell you, it’s all about the chapeaux.

Today -100: July 16, 1910: Slow news day

Front Page Headline of the Day -100: “Rockefeller Has Toothache.”

Today -100: July 15, 1910: Of Crippen

At the request of Scotland Yard, the police of NYC and Hoboken are looking out for Dr. Hawley Crippen on arriving ships. The torso – just the torso – of what is assumed to be his wife was found in his basement.

Hybrid

Porsche is introducing a hybrid car. A hybrid of what, douchebag and guy-pretending-to-be-green-to-get-laid?

Today -100: July 14, 1910: Of fish dicks, naps, and royal funerals

Headline of the Day -100: “Fish-Dick Wedding.” That’s the wedding of Stuyvesant Fish, Jr. and Mildred Dick. I’m trying to decide whether Mildred Fish is a better or a worse name than Mildred Dick.

Confusing Sports Headline of the Day -100: “Yanks Show Poor Form Against Naps.” Evidently it has nothing to do with people preferring sleep to masturbation, but rather something to do with the baseball teams the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Naps, which was the actual name of a baseball team; it was picked by a newspaper contest.

Edward VII’s funeral cost Britain $202,500.

Today -100: July 13, 1910: Of Cuban conspiracies and women’s suffrage in Britain

In Cuba, Col. Jorge Valera, who is, the NYT insists on informing us, a mulatto, is arrested along with his associates for allegedly planning to blow up bridges, railways and property owned by foreigners in a fake uprising intended to get the US to intervene militarily, which would break the Cuban stock market and the conspirators would clean up. And they’d have gotten away with it if not for Bruce Willis. Or something.

The British House of Commons passed the second reading of a women’s suffrage bill 299-190. It’s a pretty conservative measure, extending the property-based municipal franchise to parliamentary elections. If this passed, women would make up a small percentage of the electorate. Not that it matters, since the government won’t give the bill parliamentary time to go any further. Prime Minister Asquith gave a strong speech opposing women’s suffrage (the majority of his cabinet supports it), raising the prospect that if women got the vote, next they’d demand to be MPs or even Cabinet positions, gasp horror.

Today -100: July 12, 1910: Of fight pictures and lynchings

In NY, a theater advertising “Pictures of the Jeffries-Johnson Fight” is wrecked after patrons discover that this meant not moving pictures but snapshots.

That theater was charging 25¢, but when the movies do finally arrive Monday, tickets may be as much as $1 or $2 (which has the perceived advantage of pricing most blacks out of the audience). For just the fight movies, no additional features.

Ohio Governor Judson Harmon removes the mayor and sheriff of Newark for failing to prevent the lynching of Carl Etherington. The new mayor then fires the police chief and a captain, for failing to enforce the county’s prohibition law. Two men are arrested in connection with the lynching. Rather suspiciously, both are black men, one of them a mute. I smell scapegoat.

I don’t remember falling over

More news you can use from the Daily Telegraph. Headline of the Day: “Tory MP ‘Too Drunk to Vote in Commons Debate.’” And the Name of the Day: that Tory MP is called Mark Reckless. Just elected in May. Quote of the Day: Mark Reckless, MP: “I normally have just one or two and know when to stop. I don’t know what happened. I don’t remember falling over.”

Today -100: July 11, 1910: Of lynchings, more lynchings, sending in the Marines, and presidential exercise

Ohio Governor Judson Harmon arrives in Newark, OH, the scene of the lynching Friday, examined the jail and cross-examined the sheriff and mayor, who claim not to have recognized any one in the mob, though no one was attempting to disguise their identity.

And in Rayville, Louisiana, a mob lynches a man who was appealing his conviction for murdering the town marshal. A note was pinned to his clothing: “This is the outcome of the appeal.”

For a nice change of pace, both the Newark and Rayville lynchings were of white men.

500 Marines from Alabama are reportedly being picked to be sent to Nicaragua. “It is not stated with which side the Americans will fight.”

79-year-old Porfirio Díaz is “re-elected” for a 7th term as president of Mexico (1876-80, 1884-).

Taft is trying to take off 25 pounds of his 285 pounds. He has a trainer and is... boxing. And wrestling.

Today -100: July 10, 1910: Please get that well into your head

Someone tried to pass off a fake movie of the Johnson-Jeffries fight.

NYC Mayor Gaynor is still refusing to ban the film, responding to a letter from a reverend, “will you be so good as to remember that ours is a government of laws and not of men? Will you please get that well into your head?” He describes other mayors who ordered the pictures not be exhibited as “autocrats.”

In Newark, Ohio, the scene of that lynching yesterday -100, the telephone pole from which Carl Etherington was hanged was “hacked half through by those who sought mementos” before the city encased it in sheet iron. Some are saying that the sheriff is to blame for the lynching, having failed to call out the local company of the Ohio National Guard during the two hours it took the mob to break into the jail. Under a recent Anti-Mob law, a sheriff who fails to protect prisoners in his custody may be immediately suspended.

Another airplane milestone, so to speak: Walter Brookins reaches 6,175 feet in altitude in a biplane, the first man to break one mile. He was in the air over an hour and ran out of gas on the descent and had to glide the rest of the way down. The NYT says he took the $5,000 prize offered by the Atlantic City Aero Club but in fact the Wright brothers, who owned the plane, took it; Brookins was paid $20 a week plus $50 danger money for flying. Pissed off, the famed aviator quit and went solo.

Okay, now you can make your mile-high club jokes, JustZisGuy.

Life after The Times

The London Times has vanished behind the Pay Wall of Doom, but we still have the Daily Telegraph. Headlines in Saturday’s paper include:

• “Police Investigate Underwear Thief” (ah, but if you click through from the news page, the headline on the story page is “Stolen Bra Owners Urged to Come Forward,” which sounds like it’s trying to be a double entendre and not quite succeeding)

• “Octopus Picks Spain” (headline on story page: “Paul the Psychic Octopus Predicts Spain Will Beat Holland”) (and yes, there is video)

• “Armour Made from Bullet-Proof Custard”

• “UK Company Invents New ‘Easy to Remove’ Chewing Gum”

• “Palin Biography to Be Published for Children”

• “Unicorn Protesters Make Their Point”

• “Dog Gets Head Stuck in Wall”

Headlines that sound dirty and are, but not in that way

WaPo: “BP Prepares to Change Well’s Cap, Then Start Plugging it.”

Today -100: July 9, 1910: Of new states and near-beer

The delegate to Congress from Hawaii, Prince Johan Kalanianaole, says Hawaii will ask for statehood shortly.

A private detective, Carl Etherington, employed by the Anti-Saloon League who accompanied a police raid on a near-beer saloon (well, that’s what it says in the Times) in Newark, Ohio, shot the owner (a former police chief) dead. A mob then beat up the detective; he was saved by the cops, only to be broken out of the jail (8 other prisoners took the opportunity to make their escape) and lynched from a telephone pole. Just before they hung him, he was asked to make a little speech: “I want to warn all young fellows not to try to make a living the way I have done – by strikebreaking – and taking jobs like this. I might better have worked and I would not be here now.”

Not just occupying a space

As part of this week’s goal of sucking up to AIPAC (they will never love you, Barack, never), Obama was interviewed by Israeli TV.

He adopted Israeli rhetoric about Palestinians wholesale (as I typed wholesale I spotted the joke I think you all spotted too, but we’re better than that, people). For example: “There’s a constant contest between moderates and rejectionists within the Arab world.” And: “then there’s the demographic challenges that Israel is going to be facing if it wants to remain not only a Jewish state but a democratic state.” Yes, they’re not Palestinian babies but little bundles of demographic challenge. Because their whole significance as human beings is in relation to the Israeli Jews.

He said that Netanyahu might be the perfect leader to make peace because only Nixon etc etc.

Now here’s an unfortunate turn of phrase: “And in our conversations yesterday, I had the impression that Prime Minister Netanyahu isn’t interested in just occupying a space, a position, but he’s interested in being a statesman and putting his country on a more secure track.”

Obama again insisted that reports of tension between Netanyahu and himself have been “greatly overstated. I mean, the last time that the Prime Minister came here, we had a terrific meeting.” You could tell by their happy smiling faces in the photographs that Obama refused to let be taken.

Asked if he had asked Bibi to extend the settlement “freeze,” he ignored the question and responded, “You know, what I want is for us to get into direct talks. I think that if you have direct talks between Abu Mazen, Netanyahu, their teams, that builds trust. And trust then allows for both sides to not be so jumpy or paranoid about every single move that’s being made”. Hate for Palestinians to get all paranoid about the seizure of their land and the illegal implantation of still more violent settlers and the flotillacide.

He thinks Israelis are suspicious of him because his middle name is Hussein. And because of his outreach to Muslims (remember when he was supposed to be reaching out to Muslims? What did that consist of, giving one speech?). But “the truth of the matter is, is that my outreach to the Muslim community is designed precisely to reduce the antagonism and the dangers posed by a hostile Muslim world to Israel and to the West.” Again, the only significance of Muslims as human beings is as threats. If they just stopped being so gosh-darned hostile, we could go back to ignoring them.

He said, “One of my favorite phrases is from Martin Luther King, who said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’ And I believe that. And I think that that’s consummate with Jewish traditions”. A Bushian malapropism if I ever heard one. Maybe there’s something in the White House drinking water that makes people get stupider the longer they live there. Arsenic, or Lincoln’s gold, or Jenna’s old stash.

A question about the BART verdict

The involuntary manslaughter verdict in the BART shooting suggests that the jury bought the BART cop’s defense that he thought he pulled out a taser rather than his gun.

I would guess that the service revolver weighs significantly more than a taser, but does anyone out there in the WIIIAI-o-sphere know?

Hairstyles that confront Western cultural invasion

Iranian Quote of the Day: Jaleh Khodayar, director of the Veil and Chastity Day festival (Motto: Good luck eating cotton candy in a burka!), talking about Iran’s ban on mullets: “We want to preserve our culture and respect Iranian tradition and come up with hairstyles that confront Western cultural invasion.”

Today -100: July 8, 1910: Flying high

A new air record: a plane reaches 5,000 feet.

Today -100: July 7, 1910: Of peace, vacations, and boxing movies

There is a proposal for a major celebration of 100 years of peace, to be held in 1914. Okay, 100 years of peace between the US and Britain, but still, 1914!

Taft, on vacation, is not allowed (by whose order is not disclosed) even to see his official mail.

The movement to ban movies of the Johnson-Jeffries fight spreads. Georgia and Texas will pass new laws. Atlanta and other cities have already passed ordinances. The chairman of the Atlanta Police Commission went further and said that Johnson himself is not welcome. Other bans include Boston,
D.C., St. Louis, and Milwaukee, whose socialist mayor thinks the movies detrimental to public morals. Some bans are ostensibly on moral grounds, some more explicitly aim at preventing further race riots. Maine already has a law against photographs or movies of prize-fights. There is also a demand in South Africa for a ban.

Roanoke, Virginia sees no need to ban the pictures: none of their movie theaters allow black people in.