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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Today -100: May 23, 1925: All things considered, I’d rather be divorced in Philadelphia

At the Geneva conference on international arms sales, Poland and Romania say they need special consideration due to their proximity to Russia (which is not participating in the conference – I’m not sure if that was its own choice). Greece says in that case, the neighbors of the neighbors of Russia should also get special consideration...

Philadelphia courts have been granting hundreds of divorces a month, Pennsylvania’s loose divorce laws (they never require a jury trial anymore) making it a destination divorce spot, certainly cheaper than Paris. The residence requirement is stricter than Nevada’s, at 12 months, but many just rent a room and don’t actually live there. There’s no legal requirement for divorce papers to be served, so one party may not even know they’re divorced now.

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Today -100: May 22, 1925: Of mobs & peeresses

A 300-person mob attacks the county jail in Dallas in an attempt to lynch two black men, but is driven back by cops & firemen with about 30 shots fired, mostly in the air. There does seem to be a general trend towards law enforcement actually trying to enforce the law in the face of lynch mobs.

The British House of Lords defeats a bill to allow women to sit in the Lords, by only 2 votes. Lord Lamington worries that a government in conflict with the Lords would swamp it with wives and daughters of its MPs; why, we might even be “inundated by a number of very seductive ladies”. Women will be allowed in from 1958 (life peers) and 1963 (hereditary peers).

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Today -100: May 21, 1925: Talking takes away all the illusion

In the German Reichstag, the Socialists bring a motion of no confidence, focusing on the government’s plans for protective tariffs, especially on foodstuffs, showing, they say, the domination of the government by Prussian Junkers.

Kansas’s former governor Jonathan Davis, who was arrested on his last day in office in January for selling pardons, is acquitted despite being guilty as fuck. He declares himself vindicated, as “I expected and deserved.” Other charges remain. He’ll beat those too, but will never hold elected office again, despite running for governor & US senator a bunch of times.

The Wisconsin State Assembly petitions Pres. Coolidge to call a constitutional convention to repeal the 18th Amendment (Prohibition). It also calls for a state referendum on legalizing 2.75% beer. The Drys attempt to substitute “milk” for “beer” and are shouted down by calls of “We want beer,” which I believe is the state motto.

Thomas Edison says static will never be completely eliminated from radios, and that talking-type and color motion pictures will never be commercially viable. “Talking takes away all the illusion and spoils many scenes that would otherwise be effective.”

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Today -100: May 20, 1925: Competing monkey trials

Dayton, Tennessee is very upset about Chattanooga’s plans to indict one of its teachers for teaching evolution, potentially stealing publicity away from Dayton’s trial and maybe even beating it to the punch.

Mussolini finally musters a quorum in the Chamber of Deputies to ban secret societies (i.e., the Freemasons). The vote is unanimous.

French Impressionist painter Armand Guillaumin, 84, proclaims himself rejuvenated by a procedure involving blood transfusions from young girls.

Headline of the Day -100:

Charles Amador is also enjoined from calling himself “Charles Aplin,” as well as wearing the distinctive mustache, cane, baggy pants, etc. (Except for the name thing, the injunction will be overturned in July).

If Chaplin now has one copyright-protected face, his opposite must be “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” Lon Chaney, whose film The Unholy Three, directed by Tod Browning, premieres today.

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Today -100: May 19, 1925: I want to see war considered a crime

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho) says he opposes the League of Nations and World Court because their underlying principle is that force is the mainstay of government. “I want to see war considered a crime.”

Rep. Louis McFadden (R-Penn.), chair of the Banking and Currency Committee and a massive anti-semite, as well as two brokerage firms, are sued for lying on an affidavit, something about a stock issue for a radio company that claimed it did radio shit that it did not do.

Headline of the Day -100:

William Cavalier, 14 at the time of his trial for killing his grandmother.

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Today -100: May 18, 1925: Log cabins

Bird Sim Coler, NYC commissioner for public welfare, laying the cornerstone of a hospital, says that with hospital births supplanting home ones, there will soon be no more presidents born in log cabins. In fact, the last president born in an actual log cabin was James Garfield, in 1831, but presidents were all born at home until Jimmy Carter, the first prez born in a hospital.

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Today -100: May 17, 1925: The greatest possible good to our friends, the greatest possible harm to our enemies

The US demands that 9 nations with debts from the Great War start repaying their loans (and this means YOU, France).

Mussolini fails to get Parliament to pass his ban on secret (i.e., Masonic) societies after deputies walk out, preventing a quorum. And this even after the Duck gave this rationale for the ban: “We must do the greatest possible good to our friends, the greatest possible harm to our enemies.”

The municipal women’s suffrage bill Mussolini supported has been narrowed in the Chamber of Deputies: women over 25, but only if they have military medals or ones for civil valor or merit in elementary teaching or... public sanitation; or mothers of war dead or war widows; or guardians of children; or who have elementary education; or pay 40 lire in taxes and are also able to read and write. Women can hold local offices except mayor, assessor, or council head.

Another Mussolini bill: Prince Umberto’s allowance would be increased 50% if he married. He’s 20.

Dayton, Tennessee teacher John Scopes, who the NYT is for some reason calling Professor Scopes – do they think small-town Tennessee high schools are staffed by professors? – says he didn’t even know he was breaking the law when he taught evolution. He says he’s heard that Clarence Darrow and Dudley Field Malone have offered to defend him (without taking pay or expenses) and he’s pleased. He will later insist on them participating over the ACLU’s objections, demonstrating a better understanding of what was going on than they did.

King George V has taken to wearing horn-rimmed glasses, which are an American thing and have been widely mocked in Britain, although presumably that all stops now.

Headline of the Day -100:

They’re all like, “’Sup, dude.”

Headline of the Day -100:

Funny, I always figured them more as butt guys.

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Today -100: May 16, 1925: All this does not change the poetry of life

Gen. Nelson Appleton Miles, who joined the army during the Civil War, becoming a general at 25, and later killed him some Injuns and some Pullman railroad strikers, and was military governor of Puerto Rico and commanding general of the US Army, dies at 85 in a manner befitting his life: dropping dead at Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus. In 1904 he refused the Prohibition Party nomination for president; it instead went to (ahem) Silas Swallow. He was wounded several times in the Civil War. 36 years after a Confederate sharp-shooter shot him in the belt buckle, they met and the soldier said that all things considered he was glad he hadn’t killed Miles.

Mussolini succeeds in convincing Parliament to give women the vote. Well, the vote in municipal elections anyway. Ironically, it’s an exercise in macho dominance because most Fascists deputies do not like the idea at all, but fall in line anyway. The Duck says “I have never met a woman who asked me for the vote.” He says in this, the “century of capitalism,” women are obliged to work. “However, all this does not change the poetry of life.” Not the limericks, anyway. Oddly, he says he’s actually “pessimistic” about the value of women’s suffrage: “I know it will not bring a cataclysm, but I do not believe it will bring much good, or, in fact, change matters much.” He also says that in his forthcoming mobilization orders, women will be conscripted during wartime.

Pres. Coolidge rejects the Anti-Saloon League’s suggestion that he use the Navy to enforce Prohibition.

After school board elections in Elmsford, Westchester County, New York, school principal Howard Lee Holden is forced out because of his habit of beating pupils with a rubber hose.

The late Anatole France had a very light brain.

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Today -100: May 15, 1925: Rhenium! Don’t put it on ice creamium!

During the January solar eclipse, a new element was discovered in the sun by x-ray spectroscopy. According to Prof. Frederick Slocum of the Van Vleck Observatory, who had nothing to do with the discovery, scientists are not prepared to bestow a name on the element at this time. This blog can reveal, exclusively, that that element was ultimately named rhenium (it would have been nipponium if its original Japanese discoverer some years ago hadn’t mistaken it for element 43).

NY Mayor John Hylan gets vaccinated against smallpox to set a good example. There are currently 6 cases of smallpox in the city, but it has a stronger hold in other cities.

The Italian Parliament opens. Mussolini’s priorities: women’s suffrage (which is not popular among Fascists in general), a new constitution, and cracking down on Freemasons and the press.

H. Rider Haggard, author of King Solomon’s Mines, She, etc., dies at 68.

A mob pulls black man Jack West from a train and lynches him near Longwood, Florida.

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Today -100: May 14, 1925: One lord a-leeping

Headline of the Day -100:

He says the battle is between 11,000 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science versus 109 million Americans. “For the first time in my life I’m on the side of the majority.”

Leon Trotsky is back in Moscow after an 8-month absence officially attributed to illness but which no one believes was due to illness. He is elected to the Presidium to louder applause than, say, Stalin.

Lord Alfred Milner, the 1st (and last) Viscount Milner, 71, governor of the Cape Colony (1897-1901) and of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony (1901-1905), secretary of state for War (1918-1919), sec. state for the Colonies (1919-1921), and, like all arch-imperialists, prominent opponent of women’s suffrage, dies of sleeping sickness after a visit to South Africa, or, as the NYT index puts it,

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway is published.

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Today -100: May 13, 1925: Guess who’s going to Tennessee!

At a NYC Board of Aldermen meeting, Aldercritter George Harvey condemns the NYPD’s issuing of special “P.D.” plates to at least 250 people whose identities have been kept secret and who use them to drive however they damned well feel like. Harvey wants a list of plate-holders. Some rich dudes admit to possessing them including the presidents of the American Car and Foundry Company, the Empire Safe Deposit Company, and Brooklyn Edison; also the maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf. Harvey calls for the withdrawal of plates from non-cops.

Headline of the Day -100:

Paul von Hindenburg, 77, is sworn in as president of Germany. Is there goose-stepping? You bet your ass there’s goose-stepping.

Three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan will act as lawyer for the World’s Christian Fundamental Association in the Scopes trial. I think he last practiced law in the 1880s.

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Today -100: May 12, 1925: Of monarchist roars, little ententes, and reasonable racist laws

Headline of the Day -100:

Monarchist roars are... not the worst kind of roars ever heard in Berlin. Republicans and Communists stay away, maybe less a boycott and more fear of violence and arrest. “One old man who boasted the honor of cheering three Kaisers in Berlin streets dropped dead when the Presidential car sped by.”

Bulgarian courts-martial convict 8 for the Sofia church bombing, sentencing them to death by public execution, but only 3 are actually in custody.

The Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia) conference, meeting in Bucharest, issues what amounts to an ultimatum to Austria: expel Communists from Vienna, reduce government spending, end the demand for union with Germany. Austrian Vice-Chancellor Leopold Waber responds that Austria is burdened with having to pay pensions and such for Czechs living in Austria who should have been expelled (I suspect he’s most irked by the presence of foreign Jews).

The Supreme Court upholds California’s racist land law, saying the ban on American citizens selling land to Japanese does not violate the 14th Amendment (perish the thought) or the 1911 treaty between the US & Japan. The opinion, written by Harding appointee Pierce Butler, says the ban is perfectly reasonable.

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