Today -100: June 12, 1925: Murder in the sky!

Another aviation novelty: A diamond merchant flying from Vienna to Budapest transporting diamonds is murdered by his secretary and the pilot. Chloroformed and thrown overboard. The secretary then kills the pilot and escapes to Bulgaria, never to be found. Anyway, this is the first murder on an aeroplane.

D.C.’s last 3 fire horses, all with more than a decade of service, will retire. When Washingtonians heard they might be transferred to the Street Cleaning Dept, they raised $100 to retire them to the farm of the Home for Feeble and Infirm. Rude.

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Today -100: June 11, 1925: Take me out to the oooooop’ra, Take me out with the crooooowd

Coming later in the month: a production of Verdi’s Aida in Yankee Stadium, with horses and camels and elephants and hundreds of performers and starring Marie Rappold. Prices will range from $1 all the way up to $1.50.

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Today -100: June 10, 1925: Of stigmata of blockhead, cheese, and flags

Bainbridge Colby volunteers to join John Scopes’s legal team (for free). It won’t happen for whatever reason, like H.G. Wells appearing as a witness for the defense, but wouldn’t it have been fun to have two of Woodrow Wilson’s secretaries of state arrayed against each other? Come to think of it, the ACLU would really love to bring in another former secretary of state, Charles Evans Hughes, which won’t happen either.

To the criticism that Clarence Darrow shouldn’t be fronting this case because he’s an atheist, Darrow says he’s actually an agnostic. 

George Bernard Shaw weighs in on William Jennings Bryan’s fundamentalism: “It is a part of a stigmata of blockhead.” He adds, “What he calls fundamentalism I call infantilism.”

Headline of the Day -100:

I just assumed this is what the French Sénat discusses all the time. Sorry, but the following admittedly weak joke is kind of obligatory: If it’s not made in the Roquefort region of France, it has to be called sparkling fromage.

The German Reichstag rejects a motion to restore the flag’s colors to monarchist black, white & red.

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Today -100: June 9, 1925: Every idea is an incitement

Benjamin Gitlow, a former one-term Socialist member of the NY State Assembly and the Workers Party of America’s candidate for vice president in 1924 who was convicted of “criminal anarchy” under New York’s anti-anarchism law in 1920 for his role as business manager of The Revolutionary Age and sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison, loses his appeal in the US Supreme Court. Justice Edward Sanford says the 1919 manifesto Gitlow published was a “direct incitement” rather than an “expression of philosophical abstraction.” He says states have the right to stamp down on ideas because a “single revolutionary spark may kindle a fire that, smoldering for a time, may burst into a sweeping and destructive conflagration.” Holmes, dissenting along with Brandeis, says the “clear and present danger” standard was not met and disagrees that the manifesto constituted incitement, writing “Every idea is an incitement.”

Free-speech wise, Gitlow v. New York wasn’t a total loss. In fact, it expanded the 14th Amendment’s due process clause to the states, in this case due process relating to 1st Amendment free speech rights.

On July 1st, Japan will hold a National Humiliation Day to protest America’s racist immigration laws.

Headline of the Day -100:

Philip Bonifant, 40, who had cancer and an interesting idea of fun.

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Today -100: June 8, 1925: Fez-less

Turkish men now wear hats! A judge evidently found a loophole in the Koran. Straw hats are appearing in Turkey for the first time.

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Today -100: June 7, 1925: Of measles and sabbaths

Dicky Loeb of Leopold ‘n fame is pronounced insane in Joliet Prison following a bout of the measles.

Texas Gov. “Ma” Ferguson postpones the executions of two black brothers for 5 days so they won’t take place on a Sunday. A lynch mob who tried to kill them was thwarted, but the article does not say on what day of the week that occurred.

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Today -100: June 6, 1925: Deep Teutonic gloom is the worst kind of gloom

The Allies send a note to Germany listing steps they demand it take to rectify violations of the military provisions of the Versailles Treaty, including abolishing the general staff and reorganizing of the army, ending military training in private clubs and patriotic societies, ending military and gas warfare training, reducing the size of the national police, dismantling some factories and machinery in factories, withdrawing 8,000 steel helmets worn by cops, reducing the numbers of uniforms and gas masks and saddles and army officers beyond the requirements of the small German army as limited by the Treaty. To prevent the creation of an easily expandable core army, the training of reserve officers should be banned, only 12-year enlistments allowed, and soldiers must hop on one leg at all times. The Allies will continue occupying Cologne until Germany complies. Germany says the Treaty does not give the Allies the right to tell Germany how to run its army and that the demand for destruction of factories is aimed at German economic competition, for example in cheap automobiles. The Allied note “arouses only disapproval and anger, and deep Teutonic gloom.”

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Today -100: June 5, 1925: Of astronomers and royal beds

For some reason, there’s an obit of French astronomer and weirdo Camille Flammarion on the NYT’s front page, with a picture and everything.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Germany will open the former kaiser’s former rooms at the Berlin Imperial Palace(Königliches Schloss) to the general public.

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Today -100: June 4, 1925: Of new barbarians and bosh

Columbia Pres. Nicholas Murray Butler, addressing commencement exercises, denounces the “New Barbarians” who are trying to create a “sort of spineless corporate opinion which, operating by prohibitions and compulsions, aims to reduce all individuality, whether of mind or of character, to a gelatinous and wobbling mass.” He accuses Tennessee of “violently affronting the popular intelligence and [making] it impossible for a scholar to be a teacher in that state without becoming at the same time a law-breaker.” That’s a reference to the anti-evolution law, of course. He also deprecates Indiana, because, er, I’m not sure.

Anyway, there was a time when the Columbia administration was against spinelessness.

Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay, one of Butler’s New Barbarians, says evolution is “all bosh” and the Scopes trial won’t last more than 30 minutes.

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Today -100: June 3, 1925: Not everyone’s cut out to be an actor

Coolidge scotches plans to have actor Ramon Navarro filmed at the Annapolis commencement receiving a dummy diploma from Coolidge for a scene in “The Midshipman.” Surprisingly, Navy Sec. Curtis Wilbur approved the idea before Coolidge rejected it (and he’ll take Coolidge’s place in the scene).

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Today -100: June 2, 1925: The child is not the mere creature of the State

Thomas R. Marshall, aka Whatsisname, vice president under Woodrow Wilson and governor of Indiana before that, dies at 71 in the Willard Hotel, while reading the Bible. His Famous Quote, and the only thing he is remembered for: “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”

Deciding the case Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court unanimously overturns Oregon’s Ku Klux Klan-backed law requiring children (as of 1926) to attend public schools, a law aimed at putting Catholic parochial schools out of business, which the Court says would be depriving them of their property without due process. Justice James McReynolds writes, “The child is not the mere creature of the State,” saying parents have the right to direct the upbringing and education of their children. This case marks the beginning of the extension of the 14th Amendment to the states. The NYT editorial page thinks this decision bodes ill for Tennessee’s anti-evolution law when it reaches the Supreme Court (Spoiler Alert: it won’t reach the Supreme Court).

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Today -100: June 1, 1925: Of mayors and reading without comment

NYC Mayor John Hylan has put a little too much emphasis on the 5¢ transit fare as the basis of his reelection campaign. His Board of Transportation has scuppered that by reporting that the new subway system requires at least an 8¢ fare unless property taxes are increased, a lot, so his chances of a third term do not look good. Tammany Hall is looking around for a replacement candidate. The R’s very much don’t have a candidate.

The ACLU plans to challenge a Delaware law fining any teacher who fails to do compulsory Bible reading “without comment.”

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Today -100: May 31, 1925: Of less-than-national defense

Gov. Albert Ritchie says Maryland will boycott Coolidge’s “National Defense Day” on July 4th because Marylandahoovians already have plans for that day.

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Today -100: May 30, 1925: He Has Brought Rain and Peace!

In New York, a messenger is robbed of $20,000 worth of, well... “It was the first radium holdup ever reported in New York.” The messenger works for Dr. Isaac Levin, who has a private practice and is director of the Cancer Institute; the messenger carries radium between the two places. The police note that the robbers may wind up dying of radiation poisoning, or at least get nabbed when they show up at a hospital with radium burns, but they don’t seem to have a problem with the messenger carrying a box o’ radium under his arm on a street car every day. Dr. Levin thinks the robbers assumed they were getting a bag of cash or something and will probably just throw the radium away, which doesn’t seem to worry him; he says at least the radium was insured.

A newly discovered malady, “radium necrosis,” is killing women employed in brushing the stuff onto watch dials to make them glow-in-the-dark. See, they lick their brushes to maintain the shape...

On his tour of British colonies, the Prince of Wales is supposedly always greeted rapturously by natives. The people of Basutoland (Lesotho) shout “He Has Brought Rain and Peace!”

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Today -100: May 29, 1925: This deprives disarmament demands of their moral basis

A District Court judge rules in favor of the government in cancelling naval oil leases granted by Interior Sec. Albert Fall in 1922 to Edward Doheny’s companies in Elk Hills and the contract for construction of oil storage facilities at Pearl Harbor, citing Fall and Doheny’s “fraud and conspiracy.” Judge McCormick also rules that Pres. Harding’s transfer of the Elk Hills and Teapot Dome reserves from the Dept of the Navy to Interior was illegal. He also notes that... someone... tore Fall’s signature from the note for the $100,000 “loan” from Doheny so that, if someone else got hold of the note, Fall wouldn’t be legally obligated to repay it.

German Defense Minister Otto Gessler insists that Germany “is disarmed. Germany cannot wage war. Germany is not preparing secretly for war.” It is, though. Oddly, he admits that in the past Germany broke the Versailles Treaty by enlisting excess numbers of military recruits and manufacturing excess munitions, but says they aren’t doing that now. He notes that the increase in size of European militaries – half a million more soldiers than in 1914, even with the limits on Germany, Austria & Bulgaria – “deprives disarmament demands of their moral basis.” He reassures everyone: “Germans are not the kind of people who can secretly prepare for war – they are too poor and too talkative.” Color me reassured.

Vienna University is closed for 5 days (including the weekend) because of Hakenkreuzler (Nazi) students attacking Jewish Socialist students and women students with bobbed hair. The Jewish students have been fighting back, not sure about the bobbed-hair ones.

Headline of the Day -100:

Tom Lee, referred to as a negro, even a “swarthy Memphis negro,” 3 times in a two-paragraph article, saved 32 people when a steamer sank in the Mississippi River. The Memphis News-Scimitar brought him to the White House. Do we want to see a photo? Sure, why not.

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Today -100: May 28, 1925: Of teapots and assassinations

Former Interior Sec. Albert Fall and oil tycoons (oil tycoons are the oiliest kind of tycoon) Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair are indicted (again) for conspiracy to defraud the government in acquiring the Teapot Dome and Elk Hills oil leases. There’s not also a bribery charge because the only evidence that Doheny “lent” Fall $100,000 is that he, um, admitted it before a Senate committee.

Corneliu Codreanu, Romanian student and founder of the fascist Iron Guard, is acquitted for assassinating the Jassy police chief in retaliation for the alleged bad treatment of anti-Semitic dickhead students. There’s a large celebration of anti-Semitic dickhead students in Bucharest.

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Today -100: May 27, 1925: Of gases and riffs

The Amundsen polar expedition is still missing! Coolidge is open to the idea of sending a giant dirigible to the rescue.

The conference on international arms trafficking will not ban or otherwise regulate the export of poison gases, but will recommend that there be another conference on chemical warfare.

Headline of the Day -100 That Sounds Kinda Dirty But Isn’t:

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Today -100: May 26, 1925: Of certain theory and theories, any aliens, and death in Bulgaria

The Amundsen polar expedition is still missing!

Coolidge approves a “National Defense Day” on July 4 to, I guess, muster every potential soldier. However, governors will be free to nope out their states.

Nope out? Did I use that correctly?

Dayton, Tennessee high school teacher John Scopes is indicted for teaching evolution. Judge Raulston, who will preside (badly) over the trial, reads out the first book of Genesis to the Grand Jury. Scopes is charged with “unlawfully and wilfully” teaching “certain theory and theories that deny the story of the Divine creation of man as taught in the Bible and did teach thereof that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

Thereof?

The Supreme Court rules that Hidemitsu Toyota, who served 7 years in the Coast Guard and applied for citizenship under the law naturalizing “any alien” who served in the military, can’t be a citizen because he’s Japanese (he actually received citizenship in 1921 but it was subsequently revoked) and Congress couldn’t possibly have meant “any alien” to include filthy Japs. The Court also denies the petition of ethnic Chinese who have US citizenship because they were born in the US to bring in their Chinese wives.

I have been unable to determine what happened to Mr. Toyota.

The Supreme Court rules unanimously that it is legal for newspapers to publish the names of income-tax payers and the amounts they paid.

King Boris of Bulgaria disregards his past opposition to the death penalty, decreeing death for 3 of the plotters in the Sofia church bombing. They’ll be publicly hanged in two days by hangmen described as “swarthy gypsies.”

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Today -100: May 25, 1925: Of assassination plots and quiet Anschlusses

Mexico claims to have thwarted a plot to assassinate Pres. Elías Calles. They arrest pretty much every official of the Mexico City suburb of General Anaya. Many weapons are discovered in the mayor’s house, but that may just be because town officials have a practice of holding up automobiles and grabbing any weapons found in them. As you do.

While Austria is so far getting no traction in its campaign to get the international community to let it merge with Germany, it’s been quietly adjusting its legal and educational systems to conform with Germany’s to make integration easier when it comes. Also, there are cheaper stamps for mail between Austria & Germany than with other countries, and they’re negotiating eliminating visa requirements.

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Today -100: May 24, 1925: Oh, I don’t think they’ll have to worry about successors

Roald Amundsen’s North Pole expedition hasn’t been heard from since its planes took off from Spitzbergen. They may have ditched the planes.

Sanford White, the first US governor of Hawaii, appointed by McKinley, who before that was president of the Hawaiian Republic, tells the NYT that he opposes statehood because then governors would be elected rather than appointed by the president and that might result in (gasp) a Japanese governor.

Italians worry that poor Benito is working himself to death and there is no obvious successor.

That article says that under The Duck, the trains run on time.

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