Today -100: July 31, 1923: The president is having a hard fight

Pres. Harding has pneumonia, as shown by an x-ray taken in his room at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. He responds to the x-ray people showing up, “Bring them in, I have nothing to conceal.” Fact Check: He has many things to conceal, but probably not in his chest cavity. He has breathing and heart problems and his doctors describe his condition as “grave.” But evidently he is “bearing his affliction with courage.”

The Salvation Army gifted a radio to Sing Sing for use on death row, but the authorities ban its use there.

A NYT reporter accosts ex-kaiser Wilhelm as he walks the streets of Doorn and asks about royalist plots to restore him to the German throne. He disclaims any knowledge of anything happening outside Holland.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 30, 1923: Of ptomaine, lychings, and dictographs

Pres. Harding’s staff admit that his “ptomaine poisoning” is worse than they’d previously suggested. He’ll be cancelling all of his California events. It’s undecided whether he’ll return to D.C. via the Panama Canal as planned or take a less arduous route.

A black man is burned at the stake in a swamp in Mississippi.

A French court-martial sentences 3 former German police in Essen to death for espionage, to wit, placing a dictograph near a French officer’s villa.

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Today -100: July 29, 1923: Of ptomaine, pie fights, and jelly balls

Pres. Harding has “ptomaine poisoning,” which they’re blaming on bad crabs. Harding denies that; he thinks it was bad canned food but refuses to name the product for fear of doing it economic harm. He cancels a planned trip to Yosemite and all his scheduled appearances in Oregon and his train is now moving south towards San Francisco, where he will rest in his hotel for a couple of days. Or, you know, whatever.

Incidentally, the food poisoning mis-diagnosis gave credibility to the theory that the president was poisoned by Florence Harding. That and her refusal to allow an autopsy.

Charlie Chaplin and Pola Negri call off the “engagement” I refuse to believe was ever a thing. Negri says Chaplin is too temperamental.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Yet more proof that silent movies were documentaries. 

Headline of the Day -100:  

Astronomer Willem de Sitter, inventor of Sitter Space.

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Today -100: July 28, 1923: Of territories and opium

Pres. Harding is in Seattle after his ship rams a destroyer in Puget Sound in a heavy fog. His trip through Alaska has impelled him towards a more conservationist position on the territory. He thinks part of the territory can be a state in a few years, but he doesn’t say what should happen to the rest of it (is this division based on “where da white folks at?” Of course it is).

The US is upset that the Lausanne Treaty did not include the Hague Opium Convention (there ain’t no convention like an opium convention), given that most of the US’s smuggled opium comes from Turkey via, of all places, Switzerland.

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Today -100: July 27, 1923: His Canadian girlfriend

Warren G. Harding is in Vancouver, the first sitting US president to visit Canada. And he’ll be dead soon. Coincidence?

Headline of the Day -100:  

More proof that silent movies were documentaries. 

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Today -100: July 26, 1923: Dr. Evil voice: 5 million marks

British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin does not agree with the French and Belgian position that the only reply to Germany should be a demand that all resistance in the Ruhr should end, with terms set by them after Germany surrenders. France is complaining that it has to maintain a big army but Germany is barely allowed any army, so its capacity to pay reparations is bigger than it claims. Something like that.

Germany is going to print a 5 million mark note. It presumably won’t show up in the Ruhr, where the French are grabbing any German cash they can find. 

The cashier at the Essen branch of the Reichsbank is fined 5 million marks, which he’ll be able to pay off with one of those notes, and given a 2-month sentence for giving the French the wrong key when they demanded access to the vaults, a key that instead of opening it activated some security thing, and the French can’t figure out how to break in.

Manuel Quezon, who resigned as president of the Philippine Senate, says the demand for the recall of Gov.-Gen. Leonard Wood is nothing personal (sure it is, he’s an autocratic jerk), and Harding should replace him with someone who could work in harmony with the Filipino people. An actual Filipino, for example.

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Today -100: July 25, 1923: Peace at last, peace at last

The Treaty of Lausanne is signed between Turkey and the Allies. The Great War is finally officially over, as is the Ottoman Empire. The Allies will remove their occupation troops from Constantinople; Britain will get Cyprus; the Allies’ merchant ships can go through the Turkish Straits; peace between Greece & Turkey with massive ethnic cleansing. The Allies (and the US) don’t get special treatment or outright exemption from the Turkish courts for their nationals.

Yugoslavia (which seems finally to be spelled that way rather than Jugoslavia) refuses to sign, because the Ottoman Empire’s reparations are to be paid by all the territories that are no longer in the Empire, including those Yugoslavia now holds, but it’s claiming it actually acquired them from the Balkan Wars.

The NYT says the real winners from the Lausanne Conference are the Swiss: “Six months of hotel bills for the diplomatic delegations of a dozen States is a bigger indemnity than Turks or Greeks vainly hoped for.”

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Literally. During Communist/Social Democrat riots in Frankfort against “usury and Fascism.” One placard: “No justice without blood.”

George Baker was hanged last year for murdering a deputy sheriff in Georgia. County officials plan to charge his father with criminal libel for inscribing on George’s tombstone that he was “unjustly” executed.

The French Cabinet decrees that the only political material broadcast on radio will be government announcements, ministerial speeches and such; opposition politicians are banned from the airways.

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Today -100: July 24, 1923: Of governors-general, duels, and pogroms

Both houses of the Philippines Legislature ask Pres. Harding to remove Governor-General Leonard Wood. Unanimously. 

Hungarian Prime Minister István Bethlen challenges Col. Pál Prónay, leader of a Freikorps-type group, to a duel. Duels are illegal in Hungary.

Pogrom in Vilna.

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Today -100: July 23, 1923: Of the perilous voyage of unprepared autonomy

Turkey’s Dept of Religious Affairs issues a decree allowing Muslims to get fillings in their teeth.

Five women are claiming to be Pancho Villa’s widow.

Pres. Harding leaves Alaska.

Éamon de Valera asks American Irish for $100,000 to fight the Irish elections.

The NYT editorializes that all those Filipino politicians who resigned over Governor-General Leonard Wood’s insistence on employing the corrupt Ray Conley as chief of the Secret Service were using it as a pretext: “This is not a conflict between Leonard Wood and the Filipino leaders, but between the American forces believing in a thorough preparation for eventual independence and the Filipino politicians who wish to embark by themselves upon the perilous voyage of unprepared autonomy.”

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Today -100: July 22, 1923: Of blacks & Republicans and movies & churches

A conference of black leaders from 18 states in Atlantic City calls for passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, enforcement of the 14th and 15th Amendments, and more or less threatens to withhold black votes from the Republican Party until it cleans up its act.

The Church of Saint Matthias in Budapest, where the kings of Hungary were traditionally crowned, has been deconsecrated and will be closed until it can be reconsecrated, because it was used to film a historical movie depicting one of those coronations. A bishop played an archbishop (they were going to put an actor in the archbish’s coronation robes, but they found a wafer blessed by the pope sewn into it, so they had to use someone holier than a mere actor).

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Today -100: July 21, 1923: Viva Pancho Villa, or not so much

Francisco “Pancho” Villa, who has been out of the public eye for the last 3 years, is assassinated, along with his secretary and 3 of his entourage. 7 men shoot up his car. Although most of them will be captured, and punished lightly or not at all, it remains unclear who gave the order – there are so many possibilities. People he crossed in the past, government leaders worried he might re-enter politics in the 1924 elections or lead another revolution, etc. The government will of course push the “feud” line. Villa had spent the 3 years of his retirement learning how to read and write.

The National Woman’s Party, in a convention held in Seneca Falls to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the 1848 convention there, chooses wording for an Equal Rights Amendment: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” They’re calling it the Lucretia Mott Amendment. 

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Today -100: July 20, 1923: Of the pleasure, the exhilaration, the happiness, and the gaiety of life, and bones

Nancy Astor’s bill banning liquor sales in pubs to those under 18 is being debated in the House of Lords. Lord Dawson of Penn, physician to King George (who he will later euthanize), sings the praises of alcohol, which “adds to the pleasure, the exhilaration, the happiness, and the gaiety of life,” although he thinks up to age 18 practically no alcohol is really needed.

One of St Martin’s bones is stolen. Fortunately, he’s dead and probably doesn’t need it (which bone is not specified).

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Today -100: July 19, 1923: Of wood and paying propositions

Headline of the Day -100:  

Lord Alfred Douglas, “a former friend of Oscar Wilde,” has sued the Morning Post for libel after it celebrated the demise of Bosie’s Plain English, saying “It must no longer be a paying proposition... to invent vile insults against the Jews.” They note that the paper claimed that during the Great War, Churchill put out a false report about the Battle of Jutland as part of a scheme by a Jewish financier to manipulate the stock market, for which Churchill was paid off with a bunch of furniture. Churchill testifies that lawyers including the current lord chief justice advised him that suing Douglas & Plain English was unnecessary because they were too contemptible for any decent man to take notice of their libels. Ouch. Douglas also claims the Jews killed Lord Kitchener in 1916 to prolong the war. The jury is directed to bring in a verdict of technical libel and awards Douglas one (1) farthing and he has to pay his own lawyers. He’ll keep pushing the Jutland story and Churchill will come after him in a few months, sending him to jail.

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Today -100: July 18, 1923: Of crown princes

Former Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm sues the German government to get his estate in Silesia back. He says his son (17) wants to be a gentleman farmer.

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Today -100: July 17, 1923: Dr. Evil voice: 30 trillion marks

Magnus Johnson of the Farmer-Labor Party wins the special election to the US Senate from Minnesota. His son Francis will create the world’s biggest ball of twine.

Mussolini bans gambling.

Germany now has 30 trillion marks in circulation, which is the equivalent of, well, some amount of money that drops dramatically every single day.  The printing presses are running 24/7.

The Pasteur Institute claims to have created a vaccine against measles but I guess it really hasn’t.

In the British Parliament, the Independent Labour Party’s Philip Snowden introduces a motion calling for socialism. It loses 368-121.

There is a “cattle dipping war” going on in Amite County, Mississippi, with some stockmen in quarantined tick regions  resisting the mandatory but sometimes fatal process. Federal forces kill a man trying to dynamite a dipping vat.

The Philippine Cabinet resigns, along with the mayor of Manila and some prosecutors in a dispute with Governor-General Leonard Wood following his reinstatement of the chief of the Secret Service, Ray Conley, who has been accused over and over of taking bribes, I guess from gambling interests, but “cleared” each time.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The title of the next Star Wars movie, probably.

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Today -100: July 16, 1923: Northern exposure

Warren G. Harding, in Fairbanks, Alaska, is farther north than any president has ever been, and he’ll be dead soon. Coincidence?

The French military orders everyone in Essen & other Ruhr cities to keep all their windows shut between 9pm and 6am, despite the 100-degree heat.

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Today -100: July 15, 1923: Of putsches, bedbugs, and hypnotic radio

Nazis in Munich celebrate Hermann Erhardt’s escape from prison with a riot and a fight with the police, as was the custom. “Wild rumors are current about the size and strength of the ‘Hitler-Ludendorff army,’ crediting it with being able to start a ‘putsch’ with 100,000 to 150,000 armed men.”

I mentioned the Department of Agriculture bounty of 1¢ per bedbug for experimentation. They wanted 1,200, but so far have received just one (1). Yes, someone in Philadelphia mailed them a single bedbug.

Another follow-up: that hypnotist succeeded in putting a subject in a trance over radio station WHN on Long Island, from 10 miles away.

I once heard an exorcism on the radio, driving through California’s Central Valley.

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Today -100: July 14, 1923: Of putsches, lotteries, lynchings, panamas, and wireless chloroform

Hermann Erhardt, the Freikorps leader in the Kapp Putsch, escapes from prison, where he was awaiting trial for treason. Four hours after he asks for a bath, the guards begin to get suspicious...

It’s taking Harding and his party 48 hours to sail from Skagmore to Sewart, Alaska. He’s been playing bridge and shuffleboard. Also, there are movies, but the NYT fails to tell us which ones.

A French sergeant wins 1 million francs, which is the equivalent of some money, in a lottery, but he’s stuck in the army for the next 4 years.

In Columbia, Missouri, George Barkwell is acquitted of murder for his part in a lynching. Rep. Leonidas Dyer suggests that this shows the need for his always-thwarted federal anti-lynching bill.

I’m afraid the song “Yes, We Have No Bananas” slipped into the musical scene earlier this year without proper acknowledgment here, but in today’s paper we have 1) a Yale professor (admittedly of poly sci) in a sanitarium who says the title is indeed grammatically correct, if misleading, and 2) this ad one page earlier:

Scientific Breakthrough of the Day -100:  Hypnotism broadcast by radio, used as anaesthesia. It’s perfectly safe for other listeners-in, though: only people mesmerist/mind-reader Joseph Dunninger has worked with before in person will be affected.

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Today -100: July 13, 1923: Or rising radical tides and prosperous farmers, injunctions, colonies, and diabolical wheat

In Alaska, Pres. Harding takes an oath against mistreating dogs or horses.

Mussolini issues a long list of things, some quite vague – “distortion of the truth,” etc –  which could result in newspapers being censored or suppressed. Also, deputies and senators will be banned from acting as editors, because they have parliamentary immunity and he really wants to put some editors in jail.

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The federal district court in Chicago makes permanent the injunction issued last October against railroad workers, 400,000 of them, doing strike stuff – interfering with RR company property, taunting, jeering or threatening scabs, being unnecessarily near to workers’ entrances, holding meetings or parades, making phone calls encouraging strikes, going to scabs’ homes, etc etc. Judge James Wilkerson says these peaceful acts aren’t peaceful: “The peaceful words of pickets, the peaceful exhortations of strike leaders, take on, by virtue of the atmosphere of lawlessness and violence in which they are spoken, a force not inhering in the words themselves, and therefore transcending right of free speech.”

Unable to get the US to open itself up to large numbers of Italian immigrants, Mussolini sends a delegation to Mexico to discuss establishing Italian colonies there. Labor unions are strongly opposed to dealing with Fascists. Or Rotarians, for some reason.

Headline of the Day -100:  

This sign goes up in Hollywood, uh, land.

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Today -100: July 12, 1923: Of klan acts and bedbugs

New York finds the Walker Anti-Klan Act to be useless against the Klan and will let the KKK get away with failing to file its membership list and other info.

And a cross is burned in New York itself, near a negro cabaret, believed the first such event in the city.

The Department of Agriculture is offering 1¢ per bedbug sent to its experiment station in Vienna, Virginia, which is developing insecticides. I can see no way in which this can go wrong.

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