Today -100: September 9, 1925: Of general outbreaks of hooliganism and borders

British authorities seem to think a Communist uprising is coming: trying to subvert soldiers, “laying plans for a general outbreak of hooliganism” featuring “a wholesale window-smashing orgy,” who knows what shenanigans they might get up to. Scotland Yard is expected to round up the usual Red suspects shortly, as was/is the custom. In Islington, Communists attack a National Fascisti meeting.

Turkey and Britain are disputing Iraq’s borders. Turkey now says it may not accept any League of Nations decision and will insist on a plebiscite in Mosul over whether it joins Iraq or Turkey.

A large white mob besiege the home in a white neighborhood of Detroit into which the black family of Dr. Ossian Sweet have just moved. Someone, Sweet or one of his friends protecting the house, shoots at the unruly mob, killing the guy who lives across the street and was just watching from his porch. Everyone in the Sweet house is arrested. The NAACP and Clarence Darrow will become involved, so more on this later.

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

Today -100: September 8, 1925: Of disarmament, reigns of buffoonery, immigration, and whistles

At the opening of the 6th assembly of the League of Nations, French PM Paul Painlevé asks the League to convene a disarmament conference, as opposed to the conference on the very same subject which the US is thinking about calling. In another slight to the Americans, only 35 spectator seats are assigned to them, with the job of picking the lucky observers dumped on the US Embassy (Woodrow Wilson’s widow Edith gets one).

René Viviani, French PM at the start of the war (June 1914 to October 1915), “independent Socialist” and anti-Semite, dies at 61.

Dr. Stephen Wise, president of the America Jewish Congress, returns from the World Zionist Congress in Vienna and says the anti-Semitic/Hakenkreuzler protests there were actually aimed at the Austrian government rather than at Jews. Nonsense. He also has opinions about the New York City elections: “I hope that the reign of buffoonery in New York City will soon come to an end.” Spoiler Alert: Nope.

In the fiscal year ending June 30th, net immigration to the US declined 68% over the previous fy. Some countries failed to fill even the reduced quotas set by the newish immigration law, while others, including Italy, had more people return home than emigrated.

A man is fined 10s for whistling for a taxi in London, which was made an offense during the war (he used a physical whistle, not his mouth).

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

Today -100: September 7, 1925: Of dep duels & midnight movies

After the most recent fatal duel between members of the Mexican Congress, in the actual Chamber, some members are considering banning deputies carrying pistols (I presume just in the Chamber, but it’s not clear).

Movie theaters in Ocean City, New Jersey have started showing movies at midnight on Sunday nights/Monday mornings to circumvent Blue laws.

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

Today -100: September 6, 1925: Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!

Col. Billy Mitchell, who knows a little about air crashes, says the crash of the Shenandoah and the sea, um, shall we say landing, of a Navy plane attempting a non-stop flight from San Francisco to Hawaii, which set a distance record for a seaplane, if you include the bit where they had to sail the thing to Hawaii using a sail they made out of the material on the wing, “are the direct result of the incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the national defense by the War and Navy Departments.” And then he gets on a plane to go fishing, and, I mean, what sort of person gets on any plane less than a week after being in a plane crash?

Representatives of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia, presumably in the Sudetenland, a word beginning to come into general usage, protest government plans to close a quarter of German schools.

The German Army holds war games near the Danzig Corridor, the territory awarded to Poland after the war, pissing Poland off. The Germans respond by accusing Polish propaganda of “warlike persecution of Germany” (that’s from the Acht-Uhr-Abendblatt newspaper, which accuses Poland of trying to get the League of Nations to allow a “Polish war of conquest against East Prussia”). Germany spreads false rumors about Polish cavalry crossing the border (well, they did, chasing after their escaped horses).

Headline of the Day -100:

Stanley Melbourne Bruce, prime minister of Australia and also in charge of the sheep dip, explains the White Australia policy to the NYT. It’s not a policy of racial superiority, he lies. Rather, it’s about maintaining a certain living standard by excluding people from poor countries who would cause “dilution” of the present population. He points out that the US, and Coolidge in particular, have the same view of immigration from shithole countries.

Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera premieres. You don’t even want to know how he got his face like that.

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

Today -100: September 5, 1925: Of war dirigibles, nickels, evolution tickets, poison, and champagne

Metaphor of the Day -100:

Coolidge wants to build a replacement dirigible that can be used for military purposes, a war dirigible, if you will. He doesn’t think there was any structural defect in the Shenandoah, which was not the opinion of its captain, according to his widow. The German dirigible pilot who oversaw construction of the Shen, Anton Heinen, blames the crash on the removal of 8 of its 18 safety valves, saying the victims gave their lives to save helium. He does say “I would not call it murder,” so that’s okay then. He adds that if the ship had used hydrogen instead of helium, it might not have blowed up.

Tammany Hall will strip NYC Mayor John Hylan of his central campaign issue by having the Municipal Assembly vote to make the 5¢ fare permanent unless a referendum decides otherwise. When this bill was introduced 6 months ago Hylan threatened to veto it (he now says he’ll vote for it) purely because it was introduced by one of his political enemies and because he’s bad at politics.

A NY Supreme Court justice bans Hylan giving speeches on municipal radio station WNYC, which he’s been doing.

Frederick Eastman of Carmel-by-the-Sea, whoever that may be, will run for governor of California on an evolution ticket, whatever that means. He also opposes capital punishment.

A future mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea will act in a movie with an orangutan.

Bulgaria denies that King Boris was poisoned. Why, he just gave a dinner party for British naval officers.

The French Debt Commission is coming to Washington to negotiate, what else, the French debt. Will they be bringing a supply of champagne under diplomatic immunity? Do you have to ask?

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

Today -100: September 4, 1925: Not as safe as a great many people have been led to believe

The US Navy’s dirigible USS Shenandoah breaks in three near Caldwell, Ohio, flying during a storm, two years after its first flight. 14 of its crew of 43 are killed, including its captain, Zachary Lansdowne, which is a dirigible-captain sort of name, I suppose. Crowds will race to the crash site to loot the airship for souvenirs and valuable duralumin, as one does.

Secretary of the Navy Curtis Wilbur says the Navy will continue to use huge rigid airships. Well, airship, since it now has one dirigible remaining (and that one isn’t allowed to be used in war, by the agreement for its construction by Germany).  Rear Admiral William Moffett, head of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, also says Navy aviation policy won’t change but “This accident does show that anything that flies in the air is not as safe as a great many people have been led to believe.” Moffett will die in, what else, a dirigible crash in 1933.

Headline of the Day -100:

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

Today -100: September 3, 1925: The eternal question: dogs or opera

NY Gov. Al Smith tells William Randolph Hearst to stop interfering with the politics of New York City. 

A “Communist agitator” whose name and perhaps nationality the NYT seem not to know (French?) was deported by the US 9 months ago and put on a passenger ship – third class – to Cherbourg, France. Which sent him back. So without ever being allowed off the shp, he’s been going back and forth for those 9 months, back and forth, back and forth, with no end in sight.

New York City has 1/8th of the federal income tax payers in the country; they pay 1/3rd of the total tax of the US.

Doctors in Hawaii are treating leprosy with radium. Successfully, they claim.

Berlin is considering raising the dog tax to support opera, although they are worried about pissing off dog owners. One newspaper says, “It is a question of whether raising a dog or attending the opera is the more cultural.”

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

Today -100: September 2, 1925: Of taxes

I guess Congress didn’t reverse the release of income tax payment info after the hubbub last year, so they are released for the second year in a row and this time there’s no legal question about the right of newspapers to publish them, which the NYT does gleefully, listing the taxes of bankers, actors (Douglas Fairbanks pays the most), Jack Dempsey, baseball players, etc. Ford Motor Company paid $16 million, John D. Rockefeller Jr. $6,277,669, the most of any individual in the US. Pres. Coolidge paid $14,091.

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

Today -100: September 1, 1925: Of strikes, crashes, and morphine

The anthracite coal mine strike begins, with 828 mines and 272 collieries shut down and 150,000 miners on strike. There has been no violence as the United Mine Workers are eschewing picket lines this time. 

Col. Billy Mitchell, who was forced out of the Army Air Service earlier this year and will be court-martialed for insubordination later in the year for uttering his opinions (airplanes good, battleships bad), is flying a plane when its engine quits at 100 feet. He steers it into the ground, where it hits a ditch, upends. He crawls out from underneath it, then drives to Fort Sam Houston to do his job, catching up on paperwork.

Hermann Göring is committed to a psychiatric hospital in Sweden. He acquired a morphine addiction after being shot during the Beer Hall Putsch and it’s making him erratic and violent. If only there were some job for which those traits...

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

Today -100: August 31, 1925: Of great excitement and bringing the priesthood into disrepute

There are anti-Chinese outbreaks all over Mexico, including the kidnapping of 40 in Sonora, “causing great excitement among the yellow race.” Will there be a follow-up on the kidnapping? I suspect not.

Lithuania bans George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan” for being “irreligious and calculated to bring the priesthood into disrepute.” Reminds me of the movie “The Sound of Music” being banned in the 1970s in at least one Latin American country run by a military junta (Argentina? Chile?) for bringing the military into disrepute.

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

Today -100: August 30, 1925: Old fogy ideas are holding back the inevitable

Germany, wanting to join the League of Nations but worried about incurring military obligations given that it has basically no (official) military, will ask to have the same exemptions the League grants neutral Switzerland.

Col. Billy Mitchell, who was forced out of the Army Air Service, says the government is refusing to allow him to test a super-airplane capable of flying non-stop from the US to Paris carrying a ton of explosives. “Old fogy ideas are holding back the inevitable,” he says. Officers in the Air Service say they don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

William Stoddard, author of over 100 books and assistant private secretary to Abraham Lincoln, dies at 89.

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

Today -100: August 29, 1925: Of fighters

NYC Mayor John Hylan responds to Gov. Alfred E. Smith, denying his accusation that he negotiated with the Klan at the 1924 Democratic Convention. Hylan says he’s a fighter. Smith retorts, sure, ‘cuz he fights with fucking EVERYONE. He says Hylan doesn’t understand his grade-elimination program in Queens.

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

Today -100: August 28, 1925: Of coal and secret conferences

Anthracite coal miners will begin a major strike Monday. 

In a speech in Brooklyn, New York Gov. Al Smith accuses NYC Mayor John Hylan of having been “in secret conference with the Klan, with the representative of the Klan” during the 1924 Democratic Convention. I gather by that he means William Gibbs McAdoo.

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

Today -100: August 27, 1925: Of souls, radio teas, hooting, dwarfs, and wouldn’t it be cool if there actually were a baseball team called the Cads?

Prof. Charles Henry of the Sorbonne says he has proof that humans have a soul that survives death.

Carrie Chapman Catt’s speech on the 5th anniversary of the 19th Amendment (women’s activism is all about abolishing war now, she says) is broadcast on WEAF radio. In Westchester County, there are maybe 100 “radio teas” where women gather to listen to the speech.

At the World Zionist Congress, a call for a Jewish army in Palestine provokes anti-militarist “violent hooting” and militarist “counter-hooting.”

The Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition next year will feature “the largest collection of dwarfs ever assembled.” The article (for which there seems to be no link) fails to explain why dwarfs are required. Was Philadelphia originally founded by dwarfs? That would explain a lot, probably. 

That’s “dwarfs,” by the way. The plural “dwarves” was coined by J.R. Tolkein to distinguish his characters from Disney’s Snow White dwarfs.

NYT Index Typo of the Day -100:

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

Today -100: August 26, 1925: Of devoted mothers, motorless flying machines, tongs, and watermelons

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson denies New York’s extradition request for Virginia Canaday, who kidnapped her son Roscoe Jr. from her ex-husband last month and fled the state. Ferguson calls Ms. Canaday a “devoted mother.” The ex kidnapped his kid from San Antonio first, back in April, removing him to Forest Hills, Long Island. There’s also a daughter, but no one seems to be mentioning her. I think she’s still with her father.

Inventor Alphonse Dube commits suicide by hanging himself after years of failing to get a motorless flying machine to work. And by “motorless flying machine,” I mean wings. That he flapped. Broke his leg last time he tried it.

A gang war between the On Leong Tong and the Hip Sing Tong erupts in shootings in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, St Louis and Minneapolis, despite the fact that “Hip Sing Tong” is objectively fun to say out loud. Do it now.

A farmer sends Pres. Coolidge a 100-pound watermelon.

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

Today -100: August 25, 1925: Of unheard-of impudence and charlestons

At the World Zionist Congress in Vienna, Hungarian delegate Dr. Kahan points out that Hungary is the only country besides Russia where it is illegal to belong to a Zionist organization.

US Secretary of State Frank Kellogg, responding to a complaint by a Zionist organization against the violence in Vienna directed at that Congress, passed on the complaint to the Austrian government (er, maybe). The Hakenkreuzler (Austrian Nazis) newspaper Deutschösterrichische Tageszeitung attacks Kellogg’s “unheard-of impudence”: “As a private person he may serve his beloved Jews as much as he likes, but as Secretary of State it is none of his concern if the native population of Vienna thinks about the Jews differently from him.”

Headline of the Day -100:

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

Today -100: August 24, 1925: Of non-engagement

Well, in the absence of any interesting substantive news today -100, let’s go with Royal Rumours™! Prince Henry of Britain, 25, the third son of King George, is reportedly (“again”) engaged to Lady Mary Scott, 21, daughter of the Duke & Duchess of Buccleuch. “If the rumors turn out to be correct, the engagement will be very popular.” They aren’t.

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

Today -100: August 23, 1925: Of kluxers and racialists

Pres. Coolidge appoints M.O. Dunning, the paid lobbyist of the Ku Klux Klan, as collector of the port of Savannah, Georgia.

In Vienna, 20,000 “racialists,” many of them veterans in uniform and Hakenkreuzler in “‘Hitler’ shirts,” whatever those might be, hold a protest demonstration against the World Zionist Congress.

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

Today -100: August 22, 1925: Metaphor of the Day -100

New York City is undergoing an unusually large mosquito invasion this year, including City Hall, where they’re breeding in the pools around the statue of Civic Virtue.

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

Today -100: August 21, 1925: A seat, not a strap

Trying again to defang NYC Mayor Hylan’s main issue, Jimmy Walker says he is not only in favor of the 5¢ car fare, but “I’m for the five-cent fare with a seat, and not for the five-cent fare with a strap.”

Musical... Comedy? ... of the Day -100:

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