I know it was you, Barack. You broke my heart. You broke my heart.

Obama and his li’l friend Al Pacino at the White House yesterday. But what are they saying? CAPTION CONTEST!

Today -100: February 14, 1912: Of missed wars, whuppin’s, and canals

Headline of the Day -100: “Europe Just Misses a War.” The LA Times reports that a war recently almost broke out between France and Italy. After Italy seized Turks on a French steamer (that only sounds kinky), a French destroyer approached Italian fortifications in Sardinia “with an air of defiance.” The Italians fired blank shots across its bows and it retreated, as is traditional.

Midland, Texas: During a trial of some sort, a commissioner called the judge a liar, the judge announced that the court was adjourned until he’d “whipped” the commissioner, he did so, reconvened the court, and fined himself for fighting. Texas!

Tourists have been flocking to Panama to see the Canal before it’s filled with water next year.

Today -100: February 13, 1912: Of miscegenation, New York from above, perpetual motion, abdications, and political emotionalists or neurotics

Germany bans interracial marriage in its Samoan Island colonies.

Frank Coffyn flies over NY in the first attempt to film the city from the air. He and his cameraman weren’t up long, because it was really cold, and he plans to try again, so I’m not entirely sure if this footage (8½ minutes) is from today -100, but it is from Coffyn in 1912.



Disappointing Headline of the Day -100: “Perpetual Motion Victim.” Hans Edgar Friese spent all his money trying to invent a perpetual motion machine, which fails to work, then kills wife and himself.

China’s Boy-Emperor Pu-Yi abdicates in an edict which asks the question, “How can we oppose the desires of millions for the glory of one family?” How indeed.

New Chinese president Sun Yat-Sen is an American citizen, born in Hawaii. But where’s the birth certificate?

President Taft, speaking to the Republican Club dinner at the Waldorf (before going on to another dinner at the Dry Goods Association, because he’s President Fucking Taft and he will eat just as many dinners as he damn well pleases). He complains about the Progressive calls for initiative, referendum and recall, “the effort to make the selection of candidates, the enactment of legislation, and the decisions of courts to depend on the momentary passions of a people necessarily indifferently informed as the issues presented”. But, hey, vote for me in November, indifferently informed people! “Such extremists are not progressives – they are political emotionalists or neurotics”.

The rebellion in Chihuahua is reportedly defeated.

Today -100: February 12, 1912: Of electrocutions, bucks, and undesirable Hungarians

The Maryland Legislature is considering a bill to change the method of execution from hanging to electrocution, but the warden of the state pen suggests chloroforming prisoners to death.

The Treasury Dept. plans to start printing the money using power printing-presses. The unions are fighting these plans.

The governor (self-proclaimed) of rebel Chihuahua state, Aurelanio Gonzales, says “Mexico must rise en masse and resist the invaders.” He means the United States, which hasn’t actually invaded but is mobilizing troops on the border.

Gov. Woodrow Wilson is having some difficulty getting Hungarian-Americans behind his presidential campaign, due to a passage in his History of the American People describing Hungarian immigrants as a “coarse crew, bred in unwholesome squalor,” “less desirable than the excluded Chinese.” Wilson writes a letter of apology, which seems to say that he likes Hungary, just not Hungarians, or something.

Followers of this feature might be interested in a BBC radio program, available here for the next 6 or 7 days, about the British suffragettes of the Edwardian period, featuring interviews of suffragettes recorded in the 1970s by historian Brian Harrison (1 hour).

Today -100: February 11, 1912: Of blacklists, warplanes, accessions, and Futurists

Hearings on the steel monopoly are told that the steel trust kept a blacklist of union members, and that during a strike in 1909, the American Tinplate Company (a subsidiary of US Steel) advertised for Syrians, Poles and Romanians to work as scabs. The man whose job was to recruit these foreign laborers explained that he always tries to meet the wishes of employers. “I wouldn’t send an Irishman to a brewery, because he would probably be turned down.”

Frank Coffyn, the Wright Company aviator currently instructing US Army aviators in the use of Wright planes in Georgia, says there is no military need to fly above one mile, which should be high enough to keep them out of artillery and bullet range. But he does doubt that dropping bombs from planes can be accurate enough to be useful at that height. He says, “I believe that some day aeroplanes will fight aeroplanes and that there will be machines that may be called aeroplane destroyers, and maybe some day, still farther away, aeroplane-aeroplane-destroyers”. Dare to dream, Frank, dare to dream.

Arizona will soon be the 48th state, but when? There was talk of doing it on Lincoln’s birthday, but Taft will be out of D.C. and unavailable to sign the proclamation that day. And they want to avoid the 13th as unlucky (it’s not even a Friday). So they’re thinking about Valentine’s Day, which also happens to be the 50th anniversary of the day AZ was declared a Territory of the Confederate States of America.

A big exhibition of Futurist art, or, as the NYT puts it “‘art,’” opens in Paris. "The pictures bear such titles as ‘The Street Entering a House,’ ‘Those Who go,’ and ‘Those Who Remain,’ but no case has yet been reported of a visitor establishing a connection between the picture and the title attached to it.”

Today -100: February 10, 1912: Of state religions

The Japanese government has called a conference to decide on a national religion for Japan.

Cardboard Khomeini comes again

Don’t know how I missed this, but last week, for the 33rd anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, they paraded cardboard cutouts of the Ayatollah Khomeini along the route he took on his return from exile. This is the greatest thing ever.

Today -100: February 9, 1912: Of suffrage, escapes from Belfast, and slapstick

The Virginia Legislature votes down women’s suffrage. One representative, a Mr. Love, said he wanted women to remain in their present high realm and not have to mingle with negroes at the polls on election day.

Churchill gave his home rule speech in Belfast and was not torn apart by Unionists, although he was hit in the face with a flag by a suffragette. Then he escaped by a special train two hours before his announced departure time, because why take chances.

Headline of the Day -100 (LAT): “Pie Knocks Out Bandit.” A robber tried to stick up a restaurant in Denver. He told the night manager, coming out of the kitchen with hot custard pies in each hand, “Hold up your hands.” She said, “I won’t drop these pies for any villain like you.” He told her, “I don’t care what you do with the pies, but don’t move.” So she threw one of them at his face. Life back then really was exactly like it’s portrayed in silent films.

A note to liberals

who support Guantanamo and killing people with drones: you are not liberals. That is all.

Today -100: February 8, 1912: No hurry indeed

President Taft drops 8th Circuit judge William Cather Hook from consideration for the vacant Supreme Court seat. He had pretty much made up his mind for Hook but opposition arose because of his upholding of Jim Crow laws in Oklahoma.

Kaiser Wilhelm gave the traditional opening speech to the newly elected Reichstag. Unlike in Britain, they have to come to him in his palace to hear it. But the Socialists, one-fourth of the MPs, didn’t. Willy demanded a bigger army and a bigger navy.

It is reported that Germany’s war contingency plans call for sending all 50 military airplanes on a bombing raid on Paris the minute war is declared.

Headline of the Day -100: “No Hurry to Talk Peace.” The 3rd Peace Conference has been re-scheduled for 1915.

Turkey orders the closing of all Italian institutions in Turkey, including banks, insurance companies and an orphanage.

The Russian Duma asks the minister of interior why he illegally ordered newspapers not to write anything about Rasputin and why he seized those two newspapers for doing so. Also, a bishop and an abbot who Rasputin doesn’t like were ordered into exile.

Condescending Racist Headline of the Day -100: “Chinaman a Journalist Now. Anyway, He Has a Degree from the University of Missouri That Says So.” And a job as a, you know, journalist. Hin Wong, raised in Hawaii, plans to move to China (where he will indeed be a journalist until his death in Hong Kong in 1939).

Obama and the Marshmallow Cannon of Doom

Caption contest.

Today -100: February 7, 1912: Of cunnels, mad monks, darts, and spies

Minstrely Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Georgia Whites for Taft. Negroes are for ‘Cunnel.’” It seems there were competing Taft & Roosevelt primaries for the state Republican convention, which will in turn elect delegates to the national convention. And while whites support Taft, blacks support what it took me a minute to realize was dialect for The Colonel (as TR liked to be called).

Florida Republicans will send competing Taft/Roosevelt delegations to the national convention, which will have to sort it out. The majority of delegates, pro-Cunnel, stormed out after the temporary chairman (a pro-Taft negro, as it happens, although the NYT notes that the black delegates were pro-TR) issued a series of rulings against them. They then organized separately to name their own delegation (Florida, like a lot of states, doesn’t have presidential primaries).

A couple of Russian newspapers are seized for saying bad things about Rasputin.

The French have invented a “terrible air weapon,” a 6-inch long “dynamite dart,” not actually dynamite, just a heavy dart that can be dropped on enemy soldiers from airplanes.

There is finally an armistice in the Chinese Revolution, but negotiations continue. The Empress Dowager is demanding the continued use of imperial titles, with commoners to continue showing the proper regal homage, the imperial family to retain its palaces and the Imperial Guard, paid for by the public, etc.

More in the spy wars: Brits are angered that one of their spies, Bertrand Stewart (actually a lawyer who thought he’d like to play at spies, but he did so with MI6’s bemused knowledge; a German agent lured him into the country by promising to sell him secret documents, then arrested him), is sentenced to 3½ years. The British press is suggesting that the evidence in the secret trial was too weak (it wasn’t) and the sentence is too severe. His father, however, expresses nothing but respect for the “judgment of the Supreme Court of an enlightened and friendly country,” while saying that his son’s actions “are no proof at all of anti-German feeling among the people of England. They merely show that ‘young men will be young men’” (Bertie is 39). Germany released him early, in 1913, in plenty of time to get killed in action in France one month into the Great War.

Today -100: February 6, 1912: Of bad barbers, time-outs, and turkey trots

Front Page Headline of the Day -100: “GOV. WILSON A BAD BARBER.; On Eve of Stumping Tour He Cuts His Lip While Shaving.”

The La Follette campaign seems to be shutting down, and Fightin’ Bob himself will take a few weeks’ rest.

The “turkey trot” has reached London, although stripped of the features found so objectionable in certain parts of New York society, but the London Times pronounces the dance “abominably ugly.”

Today -100: February 5, 1912: Of parachutes and censorship

Franz Reichalt, an Austrian tailor whose hobby was making experimental parachutes, got permission to test his latest from the Eiffel Tower, although he was supposed to use a dummy. Instead, he did the jump himself. He will be missed.

Utah Gov. William Spry is demanding the suppression of movies depicting Mormons.

Today -100: February 4, 1912: Problems

The NYT catches up to Robert La Follette’s melt-down, noting “Newspaper reports did not convey any idea of what really happened”. Fightin’ Bob needs a rest, his friends say. Also, he told the newspaper publishers that they are doing a crappy job, serving the interests of big business and no longer bothering to educate public opinion.

With rebellion increasing in Juarez, Taft warns against anyone shooting across the border into the US, and orders the mobilization of 15,000 troops along the border, with a view to maybe invading Mexico to enforce the no-shooting rule.

In Britain, the Women’s Industrial Union is trying to discover the cause of the “servant problem.” Evidently it’s that people don’t like being treated like servants.

Speaking of problems, the University of Virginia has received a grant for a fellowship “for the study of the negro.” The fellow will “prepare a paper on some aspect of the negro problem.” Like “servant problem” in the previous story, “negro problem” is a term that comes up pretty regularly and is never defined, although needless to say the people reading the NYT were not interested in the problems affecting servants and negroes, just in the problems caused by servants and negroes.

Today -100: February 3, 1912: I believe in women’s suffrage wherever they want it

The NYT covers the speeches by politicians at the banquet of the Periodical Publishers’ Association of America, but misses the big story, which came after the paper’s deadline.  It covers Woodrow Wilson’s speech but gives a scant three sentences to that of Robert La Follette, who basically destroyed his presidential chances, such as they were, with a Rick Perry-esque performance, but longer.  More than two hours long, in fact, rambling, repetitive (literally: he re-read certain paragraphs several times without noticing) and possibly drunken.  To be fair, he a) had recently had food poisoning and b) was worried about his daughter, who had a major operation scheduled for the next day, but the speech made many people think he was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, and Progressives switched their support to Roosevelt in droves.

The Association held a straw vote, which seems a rather unprofessional thing for publishers to do.  TR won.

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill will come to Belfast soon to give a Home Rule speech.  It is expected that he will be met by 60 to 80,000 armed men – 30,000 will have revolvers and many will have clubs – one foot longer than the ones the police have.

A British submarine sinks with all hands (13 of them) off the Isle of Wight after being in a collision with the appropriately named gunboat Hazard.

Roosevelt writes an editorial in Outlook supporting women’s suffrage, sort of.  (It can be read here [pdf, 5 pages]).  He wants women-only statewide referenda on women’s suffrage to decide the issue: “I believe in women’s suffrage wherever they want it.  Where they do not want it the suffrage should not be forced upon them.”  He doesn’t think it’s a big deal either way: “I do not regard the movement as anything like as important as either its extreme friends of extreme opponents think.  It is so much less important than many other reforms that I have never been able to take a very heated interest in it.”  And most of the women with whom he associates oppose suffrage “precisely because they approach life from the standpoint of duty.”  And women are much more important as wives and mothers, which suffrage must not change.  “No woman will ever be developed who will stand above the highest and finest of the wives and mothers of today and of the yesterdays.  The exercise of suffrage can never be the most important of women’s rights or women’s duties.  The vital need for women, as for men, is to war against vice, and frivolity, and cold selfishness, and timid shrinking from necessary risk and effort.”

We either believe in markets or we don’t

Yesterday Rick Santorum (who has an ill/dying child himself), after sneering at people for complaining about the high prices of drugs when they pay $900 for an iPod, and they just want health care for free, told a mother whose son depends on a million-dollar-a-year drug that  “He’s alive today because drug companies provide care. And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here. ... Fact is, we need companies to have incentives to make drugs. If they don’t have incentives, they won’t make those drugs. We either believe in markets or we don’t.”

This gives me an excuse to bring up Eflornithine again. That’s a drug that’s effective against sleeping sickness, but the pharmaceutical company that owned the patent stopped manufacturing it in the mid-1990s because they weren’t seeing enough of those “incentives” Santorum touts, as is the case with drugs treating diseases that affect small numbers of people or, in this case, large numbers of poor people in sub-Saharan Africa.

There was a happy ending for the Africans, though. Eflornithine also treats unwanted facial hair in rich white women, and that’s a market Big Pharma knows how to market to, so it went back into production.

Drugs can also be problematic from the capitalist point of view if they’re too successful. In 2006, Genentech blocked the use of colon cancer drug Avastin for blindness because it was successful in such low quantities that it cost only $42 a dose, whereas the no-more-effective drug in common use for macular degeneration cost $1,600 a dose.

We either believe in markets or we don’t.

Today -100: February 2, 1912: Of planes, operas, and term limits

In another first in the history of warfare, Capt. Monte, an Italian aviator, is shot by Libyans while he was dropping bombs on them from above. He was able to get his plane, which was also shot up, back to base.

Juarez is in revolt against the Madero government, and names Emilio Gomez as provisional president.

The German police ban the performance in Berlin of Otto Neitzel’s opera “Barbarina” because one of the characters is Frederick the Great (1712-86).

France plans to keep employing the existing Moroccan officials in its new colony, excuse me, protectorate, but they will be “advised and supervised” by French officials.

Rep. James Slayden (D-Texas) introduces a resolution against presidents running for a third time (i.e., Theodore Roosevelt).

Or, you know, precisely the opposite, which is kind of the problem

Ha’aretz: “The United States criticized a recently declared Israeli plan to subsidize construction in several West Bank settlements on Tuesday, with a top U.S. official calling the move ‘unconstructive.’”

Today -100: February 1, 1912: Of Panamans, abdications, and hoboes

Headline of the Day -100: “Panamans Hoot Colombia.” Evidently the residents of the brand-new country of Panama were called Panamans then.

The boy-emperor of China has finally abdicated (disagreements among the revolutionaries led the imperials to stall for a while, hoping to avoid abdication).

The state of Pennsylvania indicts three more of last August’s Coatesville lynch mob, despite previous acquittals. This time, they plan on a change of venue.

The national hobo convention is scheduled for Cincinnati. Which is not best pleased.