June 4, 1906 (Monday)

TIGHT SECURITY IN MADRID: On Sunday, King Alfonso and Queen Victoria headed to the opera. That meant security would be tight -- in light of the recent assassination attempt on the couple. Authorities kept careful track of each ticket, making sure they knew who got one. At one point, they discovered that one of the tickets was missing. An article said, "This had a suggestive meaning." The king's protectors did not want the ticket to end up in the hands of a bomb thrower. So, a whole new set of tickets was printed up for the opera -- using a different color. All went well at the opera. But I must say that the production was a strange choice for newlyweds. They saw "Lucia di Lammermor" (right). In it, the bride kills her groom.
PROTECTING THE BORDERS: In light of recent anarchist attacks, the U.S. is stepping up its vigilance on its borders -- or so says Joseph Murray, assistant commissioner of immigration. He states, "The immigration laws provide that any anarchist can be deported solely because he is an anarchist." That's enough to make anyone feel safe. So, how does he know they're an anarchist? They don't all walk off the boat with a lit bomb in their right hand, do they?

MORGAN'S NEW MASTERPIECES: Word from Paris yesterday indicates that J.P. Morgan has paid $5.5 million for a stunning art collection that used to belong to Rodolphe Kane. His latest haul includes paintings by Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Rubens as well as 18th-century furniture and some tapestries and sculpture. It also includes the "Rest on the Flight to Egypt" (right). I wonder where that one will be 100 years from now and how it got there.

June 3, 1906 (Sunday)

AN ADE TO DIGESTION: Today's Washington Post has a delightful tale by the very funny George Ade (right) He is among one of the great humorists of the age. This piece is typical. The title is "In and Around Luxor, with a Sidelight on Rameses the Great." He has the right tone from the first sentence:
Until we arrived at Luxor we did not know the total meaning of the word old. The ruins, which are the stock in trade of this ancient City of Thebes, date so far back into the dimness of Nowhere that all the other antiquities of earth seem as fresh and recent as a morning newspaper.
Above, I've included one of the illustrations, which goes to the heart of his essay. He writes, In old Egypt every king was his own press agent. These rulers could have written some dandy 'personal recollections' for the magazines, because they remembered all the incidents that brought them to the center of the stage with the calcium turned on, and wisely forgot all details calculated to injure their standing with posterity. To show that Ramses had a sense for his place in history, Ade "found" a parchment in a "mummy." He provides an inter-linear translation. If you can't read it in the image above, here it is in type:
Rameses Second is a Smooth Citizen. His Foxy Scheme is to bunko Posterity. His Soldiers go out and put up hard Scrap and do up the enemy and he hires a Stonecutter to give an Account of it on a Granite Rock and hand all the Bouquets to Ramses. He is building many Temples. The Architects draw the Plans. The Laborers do the Work. The Public foots the Bill. Ramses and the local Deities are the only ones who butt into the Inscriptions. He has the future doped out as follows -- Three thousand years from now when Cook's Tourists see my Pictures all over the Shops, they will conclude that I must have been the real Works and they will call me Rameses the Great.


BACK TO 'NORMAL' IN MADRID: Many newspapers in this country put on their front pages today a story about King Alfonso and Queen Victoria's trip to a bullfight in Madrid on Saturday. About 60,000 people were in the ring. (The picture at right shows the results of one fight in Madrid in 1905, I think.) The Washington Post noted the queen's reaction (or lack of reaction) in a headline: "Young Queen Unmoved When Horse Was Torn to Pieces." The article said it this way: The bull fight itself was a disappointment to the Spaniards, as some of its usual blood-curdling features were omitted probably as a concession to the Queen. She viewed the gory spectacle without the least outward evidence of emotion. One maddened bull literally tore a horse to pieces under the railing of the royal box from which Victoria looked down without shrinking.
Another headline, referring to the assassination attempt on May 31, said "National Sport Takes People's Thoughts from Tragedy." Wonder how any of the horses or bulls (of whom eight were killed at the event) would have worded that headline?

June 2, 1906 (Saturday)

BERTHA HAS A BEAU: Bertha Krupp, the owner of the Krupp works in Essen and supposedly the richest woman in the world is engaged to Gustav Bon Gohlen Und Halbach. Her income from the Krupp iron works last year was about $3,000,000. The only picture I could find is a rendering of what the couple might look like in, say, 21 years or so (right). Gustav will likely resign from his diplomatic post at the Vatican and take over the operations of the Krupp plant. Bertha's famous. I wonder exactly how she will be remembered.

LEAGUE PRESIDENT DEPLORES BASEBALL ROWDYISM: Jake Wells, the president of the Virginia League, is upset about ongoing rowdiness in recent baseball games. He says, "The next player who assaults an umpire or even lays his hands on one of them in any manner will be suspended." I don't know if he's trying to make the umpires feel better, but he wrote a letter to them and said in his 15 years as a player he never saw an umpire killed. Yes, killed. Among the umpires he praises is Bob Emslie who has had to deal with some interesting situations in the past.

SWIFT JUSTICE: It took a jury only 16 minutes to acquit Josephine Terranova, the teen-age girl who was on trial for the killing of her aunt. She still has to face a charge related to the killing of her uncle. Here's how a newspaper article described the scene at The Tombs, when she returned:
Outside the Tombs cheers were raised by a throng of hundreds of Italians, to whom the news of the acquittal was made known by the prisoner waving her handkerchief as she crossed the "Bridge of Sighs" leading to the Tombs.
I'm certainly no legal scholar, but it's likely that this case will be remembered for a long time, based on her stories of abuse at the hands of her uncle and aunt and the involvement of the alienists who tried to test whether or not she was sane -- using Inquisition-like methods.

June 1, 1906 (Friday)

THE DUST SETTLES IN MADRID: More is known about yesterday's bombing in Madrid. The king and queen (Alfonso and Ena) are safe. But about 16 people were killed in the attack. Evidently, somebody tossed a bouquet of flowers at the king's carriage. The bouquet hid a bomb. That's what some witnesses say. They also say that the bomb, hurled from a balcony, might have hit an electric wire. The royal carriage was damaged by flying splinters. The crowd was outraged by the attack. One article says, "Some French detectives were almost lynched merely because they had a foreign appearance." At least one man has been arrested.

FAMOUS FACE: Industrialist John D. Rockefeller sailed for Europe yesterday on the Deutschland, which is known for its speed and is the current holder of the Blue Riband as the fastest ship in the Atlantic. (It's also known for its excellent cafe, right.) A "battalion of photographers encountered him at the gangway, and Rockefeller actually chatted with them. He suggested to them that they take a photo of a bystander. The cameraman said he wasn't famous. To this Rockefeller said, "Make him prominent by putting him in the newspapers. Then everybody will get to know him and point at him and say, 'That's Smith, he's a tough customer.'" Rockefeller then chuckled and winked at his secretary, "whose face was as serious as a sprinter doing the last few yards of a dash. Reports last week indicated that Rockefeller would have modest accommodations. But now, the word is that he paid $1,150 for the "chamber de lux."

TAMING A TIGER: A headline in The Washington Post uses one of the more colorful phrases in the crime-fighting world: Raided "Blind Tiger". It's talking about a sensational raid on a bar near Danville, Va. A police officer had to climb a telephone pole to break into the place -- through a second-floor window. Lots of beer and whiskey was confiscated. A mixed crowd -- blacks and whites -- had to appear in court. A "blind tiger" is a place where liquor is sold illegally. Wish I knew the origin of the phrase.

UPDATE: An alert reader (thanks, Molly) asked for the results of the Cornell/Harvard crew race, which was held on Friday May 25. (A preview was in the posting for May 23, 1906.) As it turned out, Cornell beat Harvard by three lengths. The race conditions were less than ideal on the Charles River. The wind was running against the tide and there were some bad swells caused by "pleasure boats which the police had failed to cleaar from the course." Cornell's Coach Courtney was upset by the presence of the other boats. The coach "declared that the conditions had afforded no satisfactory test of what either crew could do because of the interference by the pleasure craft."

May 31, 1906 (Thursday)

WHO IS SANE? The murder trial of teenager Josephine Terranova is taking a wild turn. Here's an artist's rendering of some of the tests that "experts" conducted on the girl to find out if she's sane enough to stand trial for killing an oppressive uncle and aunt in New York City. The experts shot electricity through her body, jabbed needles into her cheeks, hit her ankles with steel and drop stones on her toes. She begged, "Let me go back to the Tombs. I am not crazy and I am not afraid." Needless to say, some people are horrified by this. It makes you wonder if the experts would like to prove to their colleagues that they are, in fact, sane.


SHIP TO SHORE: The British battleship Montagu hit some rocks yesterday off Lundy Island (left). The Duncan class ship cost $5,000,000 to build, and now her hull is pierced with rocks. It's not likely that the Navy is going to salvage it. If people can ever figure out how to stay underwater for a while, that might be the only way to visit the Montagu from now on.

MADNESS IN MADRID: Today's afternoon newspapers have a stunning bulletin: A bomb was thrown in Madrid at King Alfonso and his bride Ena (right, during their engagement) shortly after their wedding. Several people were killed in the attack and lots of details need to be rounded up by the news agencies. The couple did reportedly make it safely to the palace.

May 30, 1906 (Wednesday)

THE BRITISH MIGHT HAVE A BEEF, TOO: Members of the House of Commons are prepared to take up the matter of the quality of meat imported from the United States. This morning's London papers praised President Roosevelt for his intentions to investigate the meat-packing industry. I would think that the Lords of Packingtown won't be too inclined to worry about the British. Remember, Great Britain includes some people whose idea of a good meat dish is a pie (right)containing four and twenty blackbirds.

A HUNDRED BOTTLES OF BEER ON THE (Climbing) WALL...: A report out of Germany attempts to pinpoint one reason that the Germans didn't do well in the recent Olympic games in Athens. The focus is on BEER. An article blames "the beer drinking habit, which is greatly sapping the national vigor." It looks as though the Germans should consider testing athletes for beer. Hmmm, if that happened, maybe an enterprising trainer would have to come up with something that could trick the testers. Why not call it, say, beeroids.

ANOTHER REASON TO COVER YOUR MOUTH WHEN YOU SNEEZE: The authorities in the Muhlhausen in Prussian Saxony are pursuing gross misdemeanor charges against Johann Furtman, acording to a report in at least one newspaper today (The Gleaner in Kingston, Jamaica). The gentleman got the attention of town officials because he SNEEZED TOO LOUDLY on a city street. Not sure why a loud public sneeze is sneered on in Muhlhausen; maybe it's because of the town's place in musical history. A policeman arrested him on charges of creating a disturbance. To line up witnesses, the police officer stopped a street car and got names of people who heard the "ahhhh-choo." In the first trial, the street sneezer was acquitted. But authorities have launched an appeal. Wonder if anyone who said "Gesundheit" would be charged as an accomplice.

PERHAPS THE MOST BRAZEN LYNCHING YET IN THE SOUTH: About midnight on Monday night, a group of about 25 men, got ahold of a special train in Monroe, La., and headed to Tallulah in Madison parish. There, they broke R.T. Rogers (a white man) out of jail and hung him from a telegraph pole about a half mile from the courthouse. Rogers had been convicted of the murder of Jesse Brown, but courts declared him free last week because of a double-jeopardy situation. Brown was killed in February 1904. An article in today's Oakland Tribune calls this "one of the boldest lynchings in the history of lynch law." It seems to me that Tallulah had another spectacular lynching some time ago. President McKinley even mentioned that one in his state of the union address in December 1899.

May 29, 1906

A MEATY TOPIC: Upton Sinclair is at it again. Sinclair, who exposed problems with the meat-packing industry with the February publication of "The Jungle," warns that the killing of diseased meat is still going on. He wants stronger measures in place than the Beveridge amendment. He wants the Neil/Reynolds report to be made public by the White House. He said yesterday, "There must be publicity, so that people of every community where cattle are killed will be made acquainted with the facts and will themselves apply the remedy." Sinclair said an employee of the Armours in Chicago had offered to sell him -- for $2,500 -- some documents and letters dealing with the conditions of Chicago's Packingtown. However, Sinclair said, somebody intervened and offered the man $11,000 for the same documents.

LAND OF 10,000 FAKES: Minnesota is evidently trying to take the lid off the patent medicine racket. The State Dairy and Food Department announced yesterday that department employees are gathering samples of all kinds of cure-alls and potions. The department will analyze the contents and publish the results in a weekly report. The effort is particularly geared toward alcohol and opiates. The testing might be done better in a saloon than a laboratory. Come to think of it, I wonder if they'll test Coca-Cola.

FATE OF LYNCHERS HANGS IN THE BALANCE: The federal government is evidently trying to figure out a way to punish the people who lynched Ed Johnson near Chattanooga, Tenn., in March. You might remember a headline about the lynching from March 20 of this year. One that I saw said, "Man Reprieved Then Lynched." Evidently, Johnson was lynched hours after the U.S. Supreme Court granted an appeal. About 75 men ("of mature years") were so upset about the decision that they quietly went to the jail, which had only one guard, plucked Johnson from his cell and hung him from a bridge. One more thing: The rope broke, so they riddled him with bullets. He was to have been hanged the next day. Anyway, federal officials want to punish the lynchers, who were fully aware of the Supreme Court's action that day. People in Chattanooga are pretty surprised. After all, a local grand jury had failed to find any reason to indict anyone in connection with the lynching.

PHONES GIVE FAST NEWS: The Bell Telephone Company in Syracuse begins today a new service for baseball fans. If someone wants to know the score of any baseball game played by the local Empire State League team (the Syracuse Stars, which is sometimes referred to in headlines as the "Twinklers") all they have to do is call "information" and the operator will provide an inning-by-inning score. This is perfect for those who can't wait for the next day's paper.... or the invention of radio or television.

May 28, 1906 (Monday)

A LAST-MINUTE PARDON: The future queen of Spain, Ena of Battenberg, has made a huge impression on Spaniards. She's in Spain now, in preparation for the marriage. She received a petition from some citizens and convinced the king (Alfonso) to pardon a man who was on his way to the gallows. A telegram from the king reached the prison at Badajoz a half hour before the execution. The article says, "The march to the gallows was about to begin when a messenger brought word of the pardon." The lucky man is Fernando Levera.
AN AMERICAN HERO OF THE BOER WAR: An editorial in today's Post-Standard devotes quite a bit of space to an American named George Labram. His name comes up because of a reference to him in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Great Boer War." He played a key role in the resistance of the siege of Kimberley. I'm not sure what prompted the editorial. It seems as though the writer felt that it's taken a long time for people to realize the key role Labram played. Labram's heroism was legitimate, the writer said, "and it ought not to have taken the world seven years to find it out." But he was known in England, I think.