Today -100: June 2, 1916: Damn, now I’m going to have to cancel my vacation plans to New South Greenland

The US, you will be surprised to hear, intends to ignore Carranza’s demand that US troops be pulled out of Mexico. They say they’re just following the agreement that Carranza himself proposed (which ignores the fact that US troops crossed the border before Carranza proposed that face-saving device) and if anyone is failing to “comprehend the scope and meaning of the reciprocal arrangement” it must be Mexico. Which is odd, since the US accepted the “reciprocal arrangement” without a negotiation.

Sir Ernest Shackleton reports back on what he’s been up to for the last 2½ years. He has discovered a whole new land mass in the Antarctic, but he confirms that New South Greenland, first mapped out by Benjamin Morrell in 1823, doesn’t actually exist, Morrell totally made it up. Or maybe it sank. And that’s about all that Shackleton has to show for all that time and hardship, including more than a year on ice after abandoning the doomed Endurance as it was slowly crushed by ice.

After the longest confirmation process ever for a Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis is confirmed by the Senate 47-22 on a mostly party-line vote.

Suffragists want to know Charles Evans Hughes’s views on women’s suffrage. They remember that he wasn’t a lot of help when he was governor of New York.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 1, 1916: Whatever defects I have, I do not pussy-foot

First Chief Venustiano Carranza demands that US troops leave Mexico. Pancho Villa’s band of merry men has been “entirely dispersed,” he says, yet the Americans remain. “[T]here has been a great discrepancy between the protests of sincere friendly co-operation on the part of the American authorities and the actual attitude of the expedition, which, on account of its distrust, its secrecy regarding its movements and the arms at its disposal, clearly indicated that it was a hostile expedition and a real invasion of our territory.” However, the note fails to give the US a deadline. US officials are pretty much unanimous in declaring it a bluff intended for internal consumption.

Ernest Shackleton has left the Antarctic and his ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, but 22 of his expedition remain behind on Elephant Island, needing rescue. Everyone will be out of the Antarctic by next February.

Theodore Roosevelt, in a speech in St. Louis, says Woodrow Wilson uses “weasel words” about preparedness but “only the compulsion of the spirit of America.” Yeah, I don’t know what that means either. He says “Whatever defects I have, I do not pussy-foot,” which is the slogan of every awful candidate ever (looking at you, Donald J. Trump).

I don’t understand the Republican Party of 1916. The old guard, the people who fought so hard four years ago to ensure that the nomination went to Taft rather than Roosevelt, are now asking Roosevelt and the Progressives (actually, they may be trying to do a deal behind TR’s back) to help them prevent Charles Evans Hughes becoming the party’s presidential candidate. I don’t know what they have against Hughes. The proposed deal seems to be that the Progressives would return to the Republican party and help defeat Hughes in favor of someone like Elihu Root, who would serve one term and then Roosevelt could run in 1920. Which doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Meanwhile, Frank Hitchcock, a former chair of the RNC and postmaster-general, who seems to be running Hughes’ campaign even though he says he hasn’t spoken with Hughes for months, is assuring everyone that Hughes would accept the nomination if offered, leading to calls that Hughes say that himself. But Hughes isn’t even taking phone calls from party leaders. And no one knows his positions on current issues.

The convention is just a week away.

By the way, Hitchcock’s power doesn’t derive from his RNC role but his role in the Post Office, the greatest source of government patronage of the time. A lot of Southern delegates got cushy PO jobs from him.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 31, 1916: No, I expect you to smell zesty and citrusy, Mr. Bond

Woodrow Wilson gives a Memorial Day speech. He defends the “league of nations” idea, saying it wouldn’t be an entangling alliance, but a disentangling one, “an alliance which would disentangle the peoples of the world from those combinations in which they seek their own separate and private interests, and unite the people of the world upon a basis of common right and justice. There is liberty there, not limitation. There is freedom, not entanglement.”

In his own Memorial Day speech, Theodore Roosevelt calls for increased military spending and universal (male) military training. He calls pacifists “the old women of both sexes.”

Headline of the Day -100:

To bring out any notes or maps drawn on the skin.

Chinese President Then Emperor Then President Again Yuan Shikai is sick. Or, as his opposition puts it, has been poisoned. One way of the other, he’ll be dead soon.

The Louisiana Republican state convention was held at a segregated hotel in New Orleans, which kept out 12 negro delegates, who just so happen to be Roosevelt supporters.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 30, 1916: Losses both in men and in prestige

Kaiser Wilhelm rides a Berlin street car. For the first time. Paid his fare and everything (and a tip – most people don’t tip, Mr. Kaiser).

Gen. Douglas Haig reports on the last 5 months of war, the period since he took over command on the Western front. He thinks he’s doing pretty well, because of course he does. The only offensive by the Germans in that period has been Verdun, where “The efforts made by the enemy have caused him heavy losses, both in men and in prestige”.

Headline of the Day -100:

I thought we were past the “Oh what a jolly game” phase of this war.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 29, 1916: Nobody but an avowed advocate of blood and carnage could oppose it

The NYT supports Wilson’s “league of nations” idea as a common-sense approach to preventing future wars. “Nobody but an avowed advocate of blood and carnage could oppose it, save on the grounds of impracticability.” Fortunately, the Times thinks the US will never fall afoul of the rules such a league would enforce: “War without warning is not our habit, aggression is contrary to our interests and practice. There is not the slightest probability that in any New World dispute to which we were a party we should bear ourselves so arrogantly as to invite the interference of the league of nations.” That sound you hear is the people of Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic trying not to snicker.

Seymour & Seymour, the law firm wiretapped by the NYPD and the Burns Detective Agency, denies NYC Mayor John Purroy Mitchel’s claim that they had anything to do with a plot to ship munitions to Mexico. They say the wiretapping was done at the behest of J.P. Morgan & Co., worried that there might be some munitions contract with the British War Office not passing through their greedy, monopolistic hands. They want an apology from Mayor Mitchel, the head of the phone company, and J.P. Morgan himself.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 28, 1916: We can’t stop the horses

Headline of the Day -100:

The Long Island Railroad is putting up posters to educate the public to stop ignoring signals at crossings. I can’t find better copies:

Three J.P. Morgan messenger boys (literally: one is 15) steal $10,515 (they hadn’t intended to take so much, but that’s what was in the bag they stole) to buy horses so they could join the Texas Rangers to go after Pancho Villa. As you do. They made it as far as Philadelphia.

Woodrow Wilson tells a banquet of the League to Enforce Peace (ex-President Taft’s group) that the US would be willing to join a “league of nation” after the European war is over, to protect the freedom of the seas, stop wars beginning in violation of treaties, and protect small states from aggression. Funny how those are all areas where Germany has been the bad actor. He claims that the US has a right to participate in formulating a peace because this war has affected American rights, privileges and property. (Complete transcript here.)

Kaiser Wilhelm appoints August Müller, an actual Socialist type person, to the Food Commission. Oh how he must have hated having to do that.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 27, 1916: A rather violent hypothesis

The Thompson Committee of the NY Legislature hears from two of the cops who listened in on phone conversations, revealing that they routinely wiretap lawyers and doctors (as well as hotels and pool rooms). They claim they don’t violate their doctor-patient or lawyer-client confidentiality, listening only long enough to determine where some wanted criminal is located. So reassuring.

The new German Food Dictator, Adolf Tortilowitz von Batocki-Friebe, says that the army will have priority for food over civilians. One problem he has to face: southern German states are not happy about having to send food to satisfy “Prussian food egotism.”

The US protests to France and Britain over the “lawless practice” of interfering with neutral, i.e. American, international mail.

Former President Taft is asked whether he would support Roosevelt if the Republican party nominated him for president. “That is a rather violent hypothesis,” he replies.

British munitions workers want the traditional Whitsuntide holidays. Lloyd George says no.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 26, 1916: It was an attempt to take God out of the hearts of our little ones

“Three Catholic priests denied under oath before the Thompson Legislative Committee yesterday that a conspiracy exists among certain Catholic clergy and laymen of the city to injure the city administration and defeat the ends of justice, as Mayor Mitchel has charged in the committee’s investigation of the tapping of telephone wires by the police.” Monsignor John Dunn, chancellor of the archdiocese of NY, admits that he had spoken on a wiretapped phone about giving an inspector of charities “100,” but says this did not mean a bribe of $100 to leave the state to avoid being subpoenaed, but was a clever ruse to draw out the police he suspected were listening in on his phone conversations and anyway, he never said “100 dollars,” he said “100,” which could mean one hundred anything. Dunn says that the conspiracy behind the attack on Catholic institutions includes Standard Oil, the Sage Foundation, and the Charity Trust; “It had only one aim and that was the secularization of the charitable institutions. It was an attempt to take God out of the hearts of our little ones, and that is something we will not stand.” By little ones, he presumably means the lice-covered, under-fed orphans under the Church’s tender care. The monsignor also questions whether Mitchel is a real Catholic.

Prime Minister Asquith has been pondering how to restructure Ireland’s antiquated system of governance since the Rising (I guess just implementing Home Rule, like he promised before the war, isn’t an option, huh?). He still hasn’t worked it all out, but he will have wily negotiator David Lloyd George mediate between the Unionists and the (increasingly irrelevant) Irish Nationalists.

The NY National Guard opens an investigation into whether volunteers were turned away because they were Jewish. And it creates an all-negro regiment, Gov. Whitman announces at a memorial meeting for Booker T. Washington.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 25, 1916: Of national guards, wiretaps, and nationalized meat

The Senate Judiciary Committee approves Louis Brandeis’s appointment to the Supreme Court on a 10-8 party-line vote.

The military bill just passed by Congress requires National Guards in each state to expand to fixed quotas (800 per US Senator and congresscritter). New York law allows the state to draft men into the Guard if the quota isn’t met by volunteers. In practice, the governor would order mayors to do the picking.

NYC Mayor John Purroy Mitchel returns to testify before the Thompson Committee, whether they want it or not, and reads out transcripts of the possibly illegal wiretaps of Father Farrell and others.

The German Imperial Meat Bureau seizes control of all meat in the Reich. Possibly to make one gigantic sausage.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 24, 1916: Well-organized and purposeful conspiracies are the best kind of conspiracy

NY Mayor John Purroy Mitchel testifies before the state Legislature’s Thompson Committee, which has been investigating NYPD phone-tapping. He says the Catholic clergy has been conducting a “well-organized and purposeful conspiracy” against his administration as well as to thwart justice by paying to get a witness, an examiner of charities in the Finance Department (and defrocked Baptist minister), out of the state. The Committee tries to stop the mayor revealing details derived from possibly illegal phone taps, demanding to go into secret session, but the mayor refuses and keeps talking, not that anyone can hear him over all the shouting. This all has to do with the terrible conditions at several Catholic orphanages. In turn, Monsignor John Dunn, chancellor of the diocese, accuses Mayor Mitchel of being part of a conspiracy against private orphanages.

Headline of the Day That Makes the War Sound Like Gay Porn -100:

Germany names its food dictator: former governor (Oberpräsident) of East Prussia Adolf Tortilowitz von Batocki-Friebe. Forget about rationing food, there’s probably a kid somewhere in Berlin with no name at all because Adolf Tortilowitz von Batocki-Friebe has so many. Think of the children, Adolf Tortilowitz von Batocki-Friebe, think of the children.

The General Council of the Methodist Episcopal Church endorses women’s suffrage (but not dancing, card-playing, or theater-going, which are still banned).

The Prohibition Party wants William Jennings Bryan to run for president on their ticket. He’s been threatening to leave the Democratic Party if they don’t adopt a prohibition plank.

A bill on Puerto Rico passes the House. It gives the island greater control of its own revenue and adds property and education qualifications for citizenship. A provision for women’s suffrage is voted down.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 23, 1916: Of aggressive movements for thorough-going Americanism and thorough-going preparedness

Complaints are made that Jews trying to join the National Guard – in New York, yet – are being turned away.

A committee of mainstream Republicans (those who supported Taft rather than Roosevelt in 1912) go to Oyster Bay to tell TR that this time, he’s their man. He says of their action, “I accept it absolutely in the spirit in which you have taken it. You are for me because you regard me as representing and embodying the aggressive movement for thorough-going Americanism and thorough-going preparedness.” One of the delegation is Hiram Bingham III (they just don’t make names like that anymore), who complains that when he was in Peru, “I found the claim to American citizenship won no respect.” The Peruvian government even accused him of stealing gold (as opposed to the thousands of priceless relics he actually did loot from Machu Picchu). Roosevelt says this is because foreigners think the US under Wilson is afraid to fight for its citizens’ rights.

Meanwhile, Justice Charles Evans Hughes refuses, again, to say whether he is a candidate. Although anyone-but-Roosevelters are working hard for his nomination, he doesn’t seem to have communicated with any of them. He is rumored to have said recently that he expects Roosevelt to be the nominee, but this may be a ruse by TR supporters to force him to make a declaration of candidacy or non-candidacy.  The Republican convention is just over two weeks away.

Obit of the Day -100: Artúr Görgei, commander of the Hungarian forces which attempted to win freedom from the Austrian Empire in the year of revolutions, 1848. Since he surrendered in 1849 and wasn’t, you know, executed, although he did spend 18 years in prison, his reputation among Hungarians was not especially good, and he’s kept out of the public eye for the last few decades.

Professors Frédéricq and Pirenne of the University of Ghent have been arrested by the German occupation forces in Belgium and interned in Germany for refusing to teach in Flemish (Germany is trying to widen the divide between the Flemish and the Walloons).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 22, 1916: Of blue laws, contraband, and bally bunk

Headline of the Day -100:

The New York National Guard was supposed to have war games in Sheepshead Bay, with 10,000 guardsmen, bands, airplanes, cannon & other firearms. But it was a Sunday, and somebody complained that all that noise would violate the blue laws, so they had to do it all with blanks, without bugles and airplanes, and with the bands only allowed to play religious music (Onward Christian Soldiers etc).

The Prize Court in Hamburg rules that it’s okay for German subs to sink any neutral ship whose cargo is more than half contraband.

Former US ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau says that he and Turkish officials discussed buying Palestine. It’s not clear who would actually do the buying. Jews? Surely not the United States.

Why are the Republicans even holding presidential primaries? The vast majority of convention delegates already chosen are committed to no candidate, and no one knows who’s actually running.

At a Chicago meeting called to protest the British executions of Irish rebels, Irish labor leader Jim Larkin leaps on and strangles a British man in the audience who complained about the “bally bunk” and “ridiculous drivel” being spoken.

From the Wipers Times:

We are glad to see that the City Fathers of Wulverghein [near Ypres] are going to introduce the Day-light Saving Bill, as this will mean that some soldiers, who are in the district, will be able to go to bed earlier. It really is a great blessing, and will enable all of us who are lovers of nature to take our early morning ramble an hour earlier, thus catching the lark at its best.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 21, 1916: The faking is the best part

The German occupation authorities in Belgium still haven’t found the source of an underground newspaper, La Libre Belgique, produced “régulièrement irrégulier” for over a year, despite offering a large reward. The name is a play on the pro-German La Belgique.

Coney Island opens for the summer and it promises, this time, to be “sanitary, safe, and sane” and to ban all faking.

Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes wins the Oregon Republican primary for president, despite already having a job, despite not having announced that he wants the job, and despite having tried to get his name taken off the ballot.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 20, 1916: You cannot do detective work in a high hat and kid gloves

At the NY Legislature’s Thompson Committee hearings about NYPD phone taps, the city of NY’s corporation counselor tries to shut the whole thing down, claiming there are “national issues” involved. Sen. George Thompson (R) expresses skepticism. From his office, NY Mayor John Purroy Mitchel accuses Thompson of a “cumulative act of treachery” towards the United States Government for making the wiretapping public. Finally, Police Commissioner Arthur Woods testifies. Asked if he wasn’t tapping many innocent people, Woods says, “You know, you cannot do detective work in a high hat and kid gloves” and complains about all this talk about the rights of criminals. He reassures the public that no one’s phone conversations are being listened to “unless he is a crook.” Curiously, no one points out to him that it is the job of a court of law and not the commissioner of police to determine who is a crook.

The White House asks Britain not to execute Jeremiah Lynch, a naturalized US citizen, for his part in the Easter Rising, and they agree. Lynch was a staff captain during the occupation of the General Post Office. He will be released with other prisoners in 1917 and deported to the US in 1918. From exile, he will be elected to the British Parliament in 1918.

A Royal Commission is investigating the Easter Rising, which the NYT is pleased to call “the Sinn Fein revolt,” though SF had little enough to do with it. Former Chief Secretary of Ireland Augustine Birrell defends his failure to foresee the events, although he admits he knew little about what was going on in “the cellars of Dublin” and was uneasy about it. He defends spending most of his time in London instead of Ireland, saying he had to attend Cabinet meetings, although “a jackdaw or a magpie might have done just as well to cry out ‘Ireland!’ ‘Ireland!’ when bills were being discussed by the Cabinet.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 19, 1916: Of controversies of the past, wire-taps, and peace conferences

British Prime Minister Asquith tells Millicent Garrett Fawcett, president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, that if there is new franchise legislation before the next election (and there has to be, as residency requirements in the current laws would deprive most soldiers of the vote), then women’s suffrage will be “fully and impartially weighed without any prejudgment from the controversies of the past.”

More information about the NYPD’s phone-tapping emerges from the Legislature’s committee. The law firm of Seymour & Seymour was tapped to determine how stolen information about J.P. Morgan’s financing of munition sales to France leaked to munitions companies, including how much Morgan was willing to pay, and to get intel about German agents’ purchases of munitions for Mexican rebels. The NYPD seem to have subcontracted the dictaphone-placing and black-bag break-in work to the William Burns Detective Agency. Mayor John Purroy Mitchel denies that any influential person (like Morgan) can just tell the cops to wiretap someone for him. No, phones are only tapped if the police commissioner thinks a crime has been committed or might be committed. Which would be more reassuring if the police commissioner, Arthur Woods, were not engaged to J.P. Morgan’s granddaughter (not sure if anyone knew that).

The House Committee on Naval Affairs includes in the annual Navy budget a provision authorizing the president to call a conference at the end of the European war to discuss disarmament and create a court of arbitration to prevent future wars.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 18, 1916: No one should shake hands with Italian officers

The US Cavalry kill 5 Mexican bandits who participated in the raid on Glenn Springs, Texas, and rescue two kidnapped Americans.

The Dominican Republic’s Chamber of Deputies elects Federico Henríquez y Carvajal provisional president.

Italy makes public what it claims is an order issued by Austrian Gen. Szekozar Borovich: “Troops on the southwest front should make as few prisoners as possible. No one should shake hands with Italian officers.” Okay, killing prisoners is bad, but snubbing an extended hand is just plain rude.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 17, 1916: The only thing that saves the world is the little handful of disinterested men that are in it

A committee of the New York Legislature hears that the NYPD have tapped 350 phones over the last two years, more than anyone realized. And that’s just the official taps; unofficial ones are suspected to have occurred as well. No warrants. The committee stumbled on the extensive wiretapping as a by-product of an investigation into the wiretapping of 3 priests. More details to come.

Woodrow Wilson, speaking at the National Press Club, says that only if the US stays out of the European war will it be able to help formulate a “solution” after it is ended. “If you are in a conference in which you know nobody is disinterested, how are you going to make a plan? I tell you, gentlemen, the only thing that saves the world is the little handful of disinterested men that are in it.”

The French War Ministry rejects all the bids entered to supply the military with 100,000 pounds of meat per day after discovering that the wholesalers colluded to rig the bid.

Headline of the Day -100:

Sadly, it’s a James Douglas Glass, not a boy made out of glass.  Jersey City cops are rounding up Gypsies, because that’s what you do when a child goes missing, obvs.

Headline of the Day -100:

Sam Perlstein, headwaiter at Joel’s on West 41st St. in New York, inherits from his uncle, a captain in the Austrian army, a property which is currently commandeered by the military. Perlstein does not intend to go to Europe.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 16, 1916: Of Sykes-Picot, Waco lynchings, Irish brigades, and sending in the Marines

The Sykes-Picot Agreement is signed. It won’t be in the newspaper because it’s, shhh, a secret deal between Britain and France. It’s named after its negotiators, Colonel Sir Tatton Benvenuto Mark Sykes and François Marie Denis Georges-Picot, who each had way too many names, dividing up the Ottoman Empire. When the Bolsheviks release the text in late 1917, it will come as quite a surprise to the Arabs who T.E. Lawrence is now trying to get to revolt against Turkish rule. Zionists will also not be best pleased. Fortunately, imperialists drawing arbitrary lines on maps of the Middle East always works out well...

In Waco, Texas, a 17-year-old negro named Jesse Washington is lynched. He had just been convicted of raping and murdering the wife of his employer, a farmer, in a one-hour trial (followed by a 4-minute jury deliberation) in which his lawyer offered no defense. He is castrated, his fingers cut off, and he is burned to death, slowly, repeatedly lowered into the flames and raised out again, in front of a crowd variously estimated at 10,000 to 15,000. The remains of his body, at least those that had not been taken as souvenirs, are put in a bag and dragged behind a horse through the streets of Waco, then hung from a telephone pole. There are photographs (indeed, postcards), which you can see online (not recommended). Tomorrow the NYT will editorialize “wherever the news of it goes – and the news will go far – it will be asserted that in no other land even pretending to be civilized could a man be burned to death in the streets of a considerable city amid the savage exultation of its inhabitants. The assertion is probably not true, but to disprove it will be difficult.” The news will indeed go far, in part thanks to W.E.B. DuBois and The Crisis, but the NYT won’t mention it again.

Oh yeah: no one was ever prosecuted, although there were those postcards, in which members of the lynch mob are clearly visible.

Sir Roger Casement’s trial begins at Bow Street Police Court in London. It’s not one of those secret-court-martial-without-a-lawyer deals used for most of the Irish rebels, because Casement was nabbed before martial law was declared. He has a surprise co-defendant, Daniel Bailey, one of the Irish soldiers who Casement recruited from German POW camps for Germany’s “Irish Brigade” and who accompanied Casement on the u-boat that put them ashore in Ireland. Bailey will do a deal, testify against Casement, and be released, amazingly enough, back into the army.

US marines land in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. They’ll leave in 1924.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 15, 1916: No soup for you!

The curfew in Dublin is loosened. It now covers only midnight to 4 a.m. Asquith is currently touring the wrecked city.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Denmark, facing a shortage of merchant ships, is putting two ships built in 1776 and 1786 back into service.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 14, 1916: This war is helping the cause of women wonderfully

A huge Citizens’ Preparedness Parade is held in New York to support enlarging the military. 135,683 marchers according to the New York Times. That’s eleven hours of parade – 11 hours! – without even an Underdog balloon to liven it up, although Col. Sherrill of the NY National Guard did have a prancing horse.

The food shortage in Germany (and, it is rumored, food riots) has forced Interior Minister Clemens von Delbrück to resign.

Belgians are supposedly resorting to eating dogs.

British actors in the US (aged 18 to 41) have been ordered to return home to fight. The NYT worries about its effect on Broadway, which is lousy with English actors.

Charlie Chaplin (27) doesn’t go.

Headline of the Day -100:

British suffragette Christabel Pankhurst, in Rome, says “It will not be necessary for women to smash windows and go to jail to get their rights when this war is over. This war is helping the cause of women wonderfully.” Wonderful. When the war is over, she says, “Europe then will be mentally and spiritually fifty years ahead of where it was before the war started.”

Dr. Alexander Just, the Hungarian inventor of the tungsten-filament light bulb, admits that his announcement that he’d invented a dry cell battery that could recharge from the oxygen in the air alone was wrong, that he was in fact duped by a pissed-off lab assistant.

Obit of the Day -100:

Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem (pseudonym of Solomon Rabinovich), author of the short stories that were the basis for Fiddler on the Roof, as well as numerous plays, novels, etc, is dead at 57. He’s been living in New York and Switzerland for much of the last decade, having found it expedient to leave Russia to escape pogroms.

Japan only imported 26 automobiles in 1915, having started making its own.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.