Today -100: April 17, 1923: Of bilbos, death dancing, dead whales & ghostly accusers

Former Mississippi Gov. Theodore Bilbo is sent to jail for 30 days for contempt of court for failing to show up as a witness in the lawsuit against current Gov. Lee Russell brought by the secretary he impregnated and forced to get an abortion.  Which means Bilbo will have to make his announcement that he is running for governor again from the Lafayette County Jail. (Update: the 30-day sentence will be reduced to 10, with no fine.)

Pres. Harding allows former congresscritter Alice Robertson to be appointed as a welfare worker in the Veterans Bureau without having to take a civil service exam.

Tory newspapers in Britain complain about a “conspiracy” to force PM Bonar Law’s resignation by saying he’s about to resign because of ill health.

While Boston, Flint, Buffalo & other cities are shutting down dance marathons, Chicago’s health commissioner Herman Bundesen says “Chicago health authorities will not interfere with any one who wishes to dance himself to death.”

New dancing record: Magdalene Williams of Houston (again), 65 hours and 53 minutes.

Catholic Party members in Mussolini’s government resign after he demands they pledge to support him personally rather than their party congress, which recently passed resolutions implying the party only supported the Fascist government temporarily. The highest-ranking of the resignees was minister of public works.

I’ve misplaced the link and can’t be arsed to find it, but there’s a legal dispute over who owns a dead whale, so the federal district court in Mississippi orders the evidence, all 75 tons of it, brought to court.

In Pittsburgh, Peter Capella is on trial for the murder of Rudolf Capella (no relation! but he was a boarder in the Capella – no relation!) – family house). 16-year-old Rudolf clearly committed suicide 2 years ago, but his mother Magdalene testifies that 6 months later she had a dream in which Rudolf told her that Peter murdered him. (The NYT will not follow up this story).

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Today -100: April 16, 1923: Dance dance dance

A letter from Fanny Garrison Villard, daughter of William Lloyd Garrison and an impressive activist for women’s suffrage, peace, and civil rights in her own right, responds to a story I must have missed about the War Dept planning to investigate pacifist groups because War Secretary John Wingate Weeks thinks pacifists are all socialists or Communists. She says they aren’t.

A dance marathon in New York is disrupted by police enforcing a law against events going on dangerously long, originally enacted against bicycle races. The couples dance into a van, dance onto the ferry, and continue dancing in Jersey, as was the custom. (Update: tomorrow they’ll continue dancing back to NY, chased out by the Fort Lee cops,  then to Connecticut). Mayor James Curley of Boston says he will ban dance marathons, even in private homes, as a public nuisance. And there’s a new dancing record: 65½ hours, Magdalene Williams of Houston. “A waiting limousine carried her to a Turkish bath”. Before that, there were another couple of records broken since yesterday, though an L. Kessler was disqualified “as a result of his apparent inability to keep time to the music or to do any real dancing.”

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Today -100: April 15, 1923: We won’t talk

The German court for safeguarding the Republic in Leipzig has summoned the editors of 2 anti-Semitic newspapers in Bavaria, including the Nazi Völkischer Beobachter. Both intend to resist, saying only Bavarian courts can try them. Hitler expects to receive a summons any day now (I imagine he’s a little insulted he hasn’t yet) and says he won’t go either: “We won’t talk.”

France complains about a speech by Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno at the memorial for those workers killed by French soldiers at the Krupp plant in the Ruhr, in which he used the word “enemy.”

New dancing record: 53 hours, a Miss Goldie Hughes of Houston. Or is it 8 couples and 6 individuals in Baltimore, halted at 53 hours by a police raid. One of the men proposed to his partner after several hours.

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Today -100: April 14, 1923: Of men on horseback, scraps of paper, and cake, so much cake

There have supposedly been two recent assassination attempts on Benito Mussolini (I don’t think there have been), but he continues to expose himself to assassins by using the same entrance to the city, and “Every Sunday Mussolini is seen on horseback traversing the quarter filled with Communists.”

Mussolini would really like to get rid of some of his excess population, and offers to send specially picked farm laborers to make up the US agricultural labor shortage (ag pop dropped by 460,000 in 1922 as black people fled the South). However he won’t allow US officials to inspect the selected immigrants before they leave Italy. The US would have to change its restrictive immigration laws if it wants to take up Italy’s kind offer, which of course it won’t.

William Jennings Bryan addresses the West Virginia Legislature on behalf of a bill to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools, which he says renders the Bible “a scrap of paper.”

The wedding cake of the Duke of York and Elizabeth Bowen-Lyon will be 300 pounds (weight, not money), according to the front page of the NYT.

Westinghouse will not pay license fees for music on its 4 radio stations, so it’ll be all public domain classical music and She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain from now on.

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Today -100: April 13, 1923: Of daylight saving, dinner guests, excesses, peonage, smoking women, and dancing

Belgium has adopted daylight saving time, but France has not. So this summer, trains passing through Belgium from France to Holland or Germany may have to stop for an hour at the border.

Labour members of Glasgow City Council oppose granting Princess Mary the freedom of the city when she visits in August. Their counter-offer that she be invited to dine with 100 unemployed men is voted down.

The Jewish Tribune takes exception to the article on Poland in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica which includes a section, “The Jewish Question,” which says the Eastern Jew is “rarely a producer... a race apart, hated and despised by the rest of the population, devoted to their religion, which is a primitive type of Judaism.” A lot are Hasidic, and really unclean. It says a few hundred were killed 1918-19 in “excesses,” which the Jews have “enormously exaggerated.”

The Florida Legislature is investigating its peonage system, whereby prisoners are leased out to plantations and sometimes flogged to death.

Nicola Sacco is pronounced insane.

The Irish Free State has allegedly captured Count Plunkett, whose name will never not be funny, Mary MacSwiney, and Countess Markievicz, the first woman elected to the British Parliament.

The International Olympic Committee decides to exclude Germany from the 1924 Paris games. Russia won’t be going either, nor will anti-Bolshevik Russian expatriates be allowed to participate. Austria will be allowed in.

A Kansas judge rejects George Day’s petition for divorce, saying cigarette smoking is not sufficient grounds.

New dancing record:  Helene Mayer of Cleveland, 52 hours, 11 minutes.

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Today -100: April 12, 1923: WHO CAN DENY IT???

Now Howard Carter is ill. Who can deny the Curse of Tutankhamen’s Tomb™ now?

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Radio Broadcasting Society says radio stations will continue to broadcast copyrighted songs because the stations perform a public service without profit.

Public services like... substituting for anaesthesia?

Yeah, you really want a patient laughing during their hernia surgery.

A large meeting in Bromberg, northern Poland, protesting Russia’s execution of Vicar General Monsignor Butchkavitsch, demands that all Russian Jews in Poland be interned as hostages and their property confiscated until Archbishop Zepliak is released.

Jack, the dog who used to belong to Nurse Edith Cavell until she was executed as a spy by the Germans in 1915, dies. He will be stuffed and put on display in the British Museum. He’s evidently still on view at the Imperial War Museum.

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Today -100: April 11, 1923: Broken on the wheel of maternity

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes revokes the visa of Ekaterina Kalinin, wife of  Chairman of the Soviet Union’s Executive Committee Mikhail Kalinin, in retaliation for the execution of Vicar General Monsignor Butchkavitsch. Mikhail signed the death warrant. She was due to speak in the US on behalf of the Red Cross and Russian orphans, and was already enjoined from talking about politics. She may or may not already be on her way, but if she arrives she’ll be held at Ellis Island and then deported.

The Irish Free State fatally wounds IRA Chief of Staff, the alliterative Liam Lynch. They think they nearly caught Éamon de Valera as well during the raid.

Harding, just back from a long vacation, will soon start a trans-continental trip, ending in Alaska, but he objects to people referring to it as the re-election campaign trip it so obviously is. He’s even threatening to cancel the trip – I will turn this train around! – if newspapers don’t treat him solely as a president and forget that there is such a thing as a 1924 election.

Margaret Sanger, testifying before the NY Legislature on behalf of a bill allowing doctors to give birth control information, says “the women of this state and country must free themselves from child-bearing. ... Mother love has a chance to develop and become intensified if the children are not born too close together. Hundreds of thousands of women are being bent, bowed and broken on the wheel of maternity.” Assemblycritter Louis Cuvillier (D-NYC) calls birth control advocates “blasphemers” who ought to be “swept from the face of the earth.” So that’s probably a no vote.

The Republican NY Assembly rejects Gov. Al Smith’s request that they repeal the Lusk Anti-Sedition laws.

NYC bans human flies. Harold Lloyd-type human flies, not Jeff Goldblum-type human flies.

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Today -100: April 10, 1923: Of dorms, makeup, relaxed throats, inhuman atrocities, masks, and fox trotting

Harvard University’s Board of Overseers overturns Pres. A. Lawrence Lowell’s ban on black students living in the freshman dorms and affirms that admissions should not discriminate on the basis of race or religion (i.e., Jewish quotas).

In other front-page education news, the Arkansas Supreme Court rules that schools can bar girl students wearing makeup.

What the hell is a “relaxed throat?” Anyway, it’s what British Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law supposedly has (he actually has throat cancer), which just made it impossible for anyone to hear him during Prime Minister’s Questions. So there’s talk, again, of him resigning. Which he won’t. (Also, the Tories have lost 5 by-elections in a row.)

Russia seizes synagogues to turn them into workingmen’s clubs. It plans to seize all of them.

The French expel striking German railroad workers from their homes, evidently on ten minutes’ notice, or as Pres. Ebert puts it, “the new inhuman atrocity...” (inhuman atrocities are the worst kind) “...of the French military forces against women and children driven from their homes by the African soldiery.”

Minnesota and Iowa enact laws against wearing masks, you know, like the Klan does.

The US Supreme Court overturns the District of Columbia’s minimum wage for women & female children, calling it discriminatory and a violation of the right of contract and anyway women don’t even need this because they’re all equal now.

The new dance record is 50 hours, a Miss Alma Cummings, who outlasts 7 partners. Mostly fox-trotting.

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Today -100: April 9, 1923: You know what else is unbecoming? Fascism.

The US will demand $1,187,736,867 in war damages from Germany on behalf of its citizens. This includes claims from the sinking of the Lusitania.

Columbia University Pres. Nicholas Murray Butler won’t do anything about assistant professor of Latin Dino Bigongiari just because he’s a Fascist, indeed the leader of the local Fascists. Butler says “to attempt to discipline a university teacher for his private or political opinions would be most unbecoming.” Bigongiari will remain at Columbia, retiring in 1950.

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Today -100: April 8, 1923: Of marks, death sentences, impartial juries, and doyles

Headline of the Day -100:  

Really, what is it 1923 Republicans had against blogs?

During their occupation of the Ruhr, the French have so far seized 32 billion marks, which is the equivalent of a bunch of money. But Germany can just keep printing more money, so that’s okay.

Oklahoma’s new governor J.C. Walton (D) says he will commute all death sentences. There are currently 6 condemned men on death row. Well, I say men, but one of them is Elias Ridge who is black and was 13 at the time of the murder. Gov. Walton is an engineer who years ago built the current electric chair.

6 of the coal miners on trial for murder during the “riots” during last year’s strike in Herrin, Illinois were acquitted, so the state’s attorneys drop the remaining cases, bitching that justice can’t be obtained in Williamson County as no impartial jury can be found. The judge disagrees, so we’ll see what happens.

The Society of American Magicians offers Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to reproduce spirit photographs and all the other phenomena he thinks are real.

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Today -100: April 7, 1923: Too much evidence and yet not enough

Alliterative Headline of the Day -100:  

 

Ada Emma Deane has taken pictures of soldier-ghosts attending Armistice Day events (a quick search failed to turn up these pics; sorry). She has also taken pictures of ghosts floating behind the ever-gullible Sir Arthur.

Speaking of gullible, many people in Russia think that Jupiter has escaped its orbit and will hit the earth or, more specifically, Russia, as punishment for it putting archbishops and monsignors on trial.

Headline of the Day -100:  

 

Oh phew, for a second there I thought he said blogs.

Sen. Hiram Johnson visits Italy and meets Mussolini, who he calls “the marvel of modern Italy.” Mussolini is an admirer of Theodore Roosevelt, whose running mate Johnson was.

Federal prohibition agents claim to have seized nearly $10 million in property in 1922. 69,000 arrests were made. 14 dry agents were killed on duty.

Wisconsin Gov. John Blaine signs into law a ban on woke history textbooks which “defame” the Founders or contain propaganda on behalf of foreign governments.

Next year’s Olympics in Paris will give prizes for paintings, sculptures, architecture, etc. I first read the headline “Olympic Winners to Get Art Prizes” as meaning that the winners in, say, pole vaulting, would get to go home with a nice painting.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the “criminal syndicalism” trial in Michigan of Communist, union organizer, and Communist candidate for president in 1924, 1928 and 1932 William Z. Foster (the Z stands for Zebulon) (on further research, I find that he was born William Edward Foster but adopted the Z so mail carriers in Spokane wouldn’t confuse him with another William E. Foster; he kept the Z but didn’t use the Zebulon). The lengthy trial just ended in a hung jury. The only woman juror, Minerva Olson, explains that the evenly split jury was “just swamped with words, words, words,” in which the entire history of Communism back to 1847 was presented to the jury. “Too much evidence and yet not enough,” she says.

There is a heated debate at Ohio State University over the percentage of woman students who engage in “petting.” All of the quoted students of both sexes agree that it’s at least 50%.

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Today -100: April 6, 1923: The Egyptians had powers we know nothing of

Following Lord Carnarvon’s death, Egyptologists deny that tombs contain “secret poisons” or ancient curses. But what nefarious secrets are being covered up by Big Egyptology? The increasingly embarrassing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, just arrived in the US with a gullible Scientific American writer in tow so he can prove the existence of all things spoooooky, says Carnarvon was probably the victim of a malevolent spirit or elementals or something: “The Egyptians had powers we know nothing of.”

Soviet troops have supposedly killed – the AP uses the word “executed” but I don’t think it’s meant in the juridical sense – 340 Ukrainian peasants protesting the execution of Monsignor Constantine Butchkavitsc. There are also pogroms of Jews in Ukraine, which I assume are related to the execution, since anti-Semitic violence is certainly the preferred reaction in Poland.

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Today -100: April 5, 1923: Of curses, anti-Passover, klandidates, illegal time, and dancing

The Earl of Carnarvon dies of blood poisoning from an insect bite, the first victim of the Curse of Tutankhamen’s Tomb™.

Russian Jewish Communists hold some sort of parody Passover event at Krementshug in the Ukraine, getting into a fight with observant Jews. The Jewish Communists want Jews to go to work on Jewish holidays and give their wages for those days to the Red Army & the labor movement.

Harding was considering hiring a press agent, but abandons the idea because everyone tells him the optics of the government paying for propaganda aren’t great.

In Tuesday’s elections, the KKK fails to defeat 3 Catholic candidates for the East St Louis City Council, and the one candidate it does get elected immediately repudiates them. Klan candidates for Dallas city offices, however, all win, as do those in various cities in Kansas, including Wichita and Kansas City.

The lower house of the Connecticut Legislature passes a bill making it illegal to display any time other than Standard Time on clocks or even watches.

The new dance record is 33 hours and 15 minutes. A French university student.

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Today -100: April 4, 1923: Of dry turks, devers, roosevelts, and greatly affected popes

Constantinople is now dry, with violations punishable by beatings.

William Dever (D) is elected mayor of Chicago, replacing Big Bill Thompson (R). D’s also now hold 38 of 50 seats on the City Council.

Progressive Republicans from the West are pushing for Harding to drop Coolidge as his running mate in ‘24 and replace him with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Teddy Roosevelt Jr. They think there are too many New Englanders in the Harding administration. TR JR has been saying he doesn’t want the job.

Russia executes Monsignor Constantine Butchkavitsch, by firing squad or shot by a single executioner, depending on which story you believe. They keep it secret for several days. Pope Pius is said to be “greatly affected.” The Russian response to Britain’s protest is so gosh darn rude (it mentions British executions in India and Ireland) that Britain refuses to take it.

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Today -100: April 3, 1923: They will never put the Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan in City Hall

In military breakthrough news, Russia says it has discovered a means of harnessing the latent energy of the atmosphere to hurl objects of any size almost unlimited distances. And the US Army says it has developed a gas mask impervious to all poison gases, including carbon monoxide and... wait, they’ve been using cocoanut shells to make gas masks up until now?

(Update: I’m informed the Russia story may have been a joke  – does Russian even have April Fools Day? – that was taken seriously.)

Mobs rampage through the Jewish district of Jassy, Romania.

A grand jury investigating last year’s trial of Illinois Gov. Len Small indicts three men for conspiracy, including two fixers and one of the jurors, who after the trial was appointed deputy state game warden. Authorities are still looking for two witnesses, including a Chicago detective and labor leader “Umbrella Mike” Boyle.

The Chicago mayoral election takes place today. The last days have been marked by anonymous cards, believed to originate with the KKK, attacking William Dever (D)’s Catholicism with a fake reprint from a Catholic newspaper telling Catholics that they are Catholics first, citizens second. D’s in turn pointed out Arthur Lueder (R)’s German ancestry.

A federal judge in Kentucky rules that federal prohibition cops can stop and search cars without warrants. Another federal judge recently ruled that they can’t.

NY Gov. Al Smith vetoes a bill allowing cities of the second class, which I take to mean every city except NYC, to limit automobile speed to a minimum of 20 mph, up from the present 15 mph. Smith won’t allow this until driver’s licenses are introduced, with a driver’s test. This already exists, but only in NYC, and is opposed by upstate Republicans.

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Today -100: April 2, 1923: Monstrous bloodbaths are the worst kind of bloodbath

The French arrest four Krupp directors for complicity with the resistance to the French attempted carjacking at their plant in Essen yesterday. The death toll in that is 9 & will rise to at least 11. Pres. Ebert expresses horror at “the monstrous bloodbath which French militarism has introduced among peaceful and defenseless workmen.”

Rumor of the Day -100: Revolution in Romania! Palace stormed! King and Queen flee!

Bulgaria sentences Vasil Radoslavov, the prime minister at the start of the Great War, and 5 other Cabinet ministers to prison for life. Radoslavov is in exile, don’t know about the rest.

Marina Vega, a 15-year-old divorcee who came to LA from Mexico City to pursue Charlie Chaplin, sneaks into his house and (supposedly) takes poison. The hospital releases her, and she now says Chaplin’s not so great, or he wouldn’t want to marry Pola Negri.

The dancing record is now 27 hours.

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Today -100: April 1, 1923: Of krupp killing, wet garys, klandiana, and safety

What are the French stealing today? Soldiers arrive at the Krupp works in Essen to seize its automobiles, get into a fight with Krupp workers and start shooting, with machine guns according to some reports.

The mayor of Gary, Indiana, Roswell O. Johnson, as well as a judge, prosecutor, sheriff, etc, 55 people across the political and legal sectors of the city, are convicted of conspiracy to violate the prohibition law.

Chairman of the Indiana Republican State Committee Lawrence Lyons, who resigned from the Ku Klux Klan six weeks after joining when he suddenly realized it was bad and un-American and shit, says he only joined because “I was led to believe I would be able to gain some particular advantage for the Republican organization”. So that’s okay then. (the Indiana Klan will be the largest in the country by 1924, maybe already, and it will be largely Republican, unlike in most other states).

Premiering today:

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Today -100: March 31, 1923: Hypnotism is responsible for sooooo many marriages

More anti-Semitic rioting in Bucharest. Students attack the Jewish Theatre. The government, naturally, closes the theatre.

France threatens to expel all railroad workers in the Ruhr & Rhineland who don’t return to work. The striking men are being paid by the German government, but they’ve been demanding higher pay to do nothing because of inflation. The French are upping the pressure because they think Germany can’t afford to fund the resistance much longer, given the complete failure of a loan attempt, probably because the Reparations Commission said that Germany could issue bonds but not repay them without permission.

Russia commutes the death sentence imposed on Archbishop Zepliak to 10 years in solitary, but says Vicar General Monsignor Butchkavitsch will be executed (Spoiler Alert: And he will be).

After a case of whiskey is discovered in an Oklahoma Legislature committee room, the speaker places armed guards in the building. The House then votes to remove them.

Lenin is again said to be dying, as was the custom, and will supposedly be replaced by a military dictatorship led by Trotsky.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: March 30, 1923: Men nowadays are tired of liberty

French troops seize Ruhr vineyards owned by the Prussian state.

Mussolini writes that “men nowadays are tired of liberty.” Russia and Italy have proven “that it is possible to govern outside, above and against all liberal ideas. Neither communism nor fascism has anything to do with liberty.”

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Today -100: March 29, 1923: Of suicides and dots

The US protests the death sentences on Archbishop Zepliak, et al, through the US ambassador to Germany, since the US has no diplomatic relations with Russia. Russia may exchange the archbish for Communists in prison in Poland. The pope claims that they should be freed because they are his subjects. Somehow I don’t think the Soviet Union recognizes the Vatican as a country.

The Save-a-Life League reports that there were 12,000 suicides in the US in 1922. 79 of them were millionaires, one-third were women. In NYC, an increasing number of suicides are throwing themselves in front of trains or jumping off tall buildings.

The Texas Republican Party says it will get KKK members employed by the federal government in Texas fired. Do they have the power to do that?

Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty’s son Draper is a suspect in the murder of Dot King (which sounds like the lamest Batman villain). That’s bad, right? Actually, it seems not to have come to anything, although his wife does have him committed next month. Looking into that, I found that Harry Daugherty’s 1932 book The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy was ghost-written by Thomas Dixon, the racist author of the books Birth of a Nation was based on.

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