Oct. 21, 1906 (Sunday)

DEFENSE LAWYER GETS AN ASSIST FROM THE ROOM NEXT DOOR: Joseph Ager, an older man of German background, faced trial for assault recently in Kansas City. Meanwhile, in an adjoining room, someone started playing a graphophone -- and people in the courtroom easily heard "Ask the Savior to Help You," which might sound like this. A quick-thinking defense lawyer took advantage of the moment. He called the jury's attention to the sentiment, repeating the words as the song played. By the time the song was over, many heads were bowed in the courtroom. Ager was acquitted.

A LAWYER JOKE FROM 1906: Today's New York Times prints this item under the headline "As a Last Extreme":
Once a number of legal lights in Washington were gathered in the smoking room of a lawyers' club, when the talk turned to a discussion of the veracity of lawyers. "The average man," remarked one disciple of Blackstone, "seems only too ready to assume we are all liars -- a very unjust position, it seems to me. Do we not sometimes tell the truth?" he asked of his neighbor, a well-known criminal lawyer.
"Certainly," promptly responded the latter. "We will do anything sometimes to win a case."

BASEBALL STAR DIES: One of the best baseball players ever to play catcher, William Buckingham "Buck" Ewing (right), died yesterday in Cincinnati. He was one of the best hitters, too. He managed and caught for the New York club in 188 and 1889. His death was attributed to paralysis and diabetes.

Oct. 20, 1906 (Saturday)

BANNED BY THE BISHOP: Bishop O'Connor of the Newark Diocese has banned the singing of a couple of popular hymns during church services throughout the area. One of the banned songs is "Nearer My God to Thee." It was good enough to play when they buried President Garfield in Ohio in 1881 and it was good enough to play at the memorial service for President McKinley in 1901 at England's Westminster Abbey. The other banned song is "Lead, Kindly Light," which was written by John Henry Newman -- before he converted to Catholicism. Bishop O'Connor explains that the service should include only songs that are part of the liturgical service, adding that "Nearer My God to Thee" is no more appropriate than "Sweet By and By." The song is purely sentimental, he says.

SWISS TELL MOTORISTS TO TAKE A HIKE: Switzerland hotel owners are upset that strict automobile laws in that country -- and a keen anti-auto attitude held by peasants -- are keeping wealthy patrons away from that country. In the past year, various well-known motorists have had some tough sledding in Switzerland. For example, Queen Margherita (who's intimately linked to the history of pizza) was stoned; J.D. Rockefeller Jr was arrested and fined; Mrs. Jay Gould was lashed across the face by a peasant near Lucerne and hundreds have been arrested and fined for exceeding the speed limit. According to an article in today's Post-Standard, that speed limit is a lethargic 3 MPH, with a mile set at 1,384 yards. Imagine not being able to legally pass a WALKING POLICEMAN!

YACHT-A, YACHT-A, YACHT-A: President Roosevelt says he plans to give up his use of the presidential yacht, Mayflower (left), which is being overhauled at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in anticipation of the yacht being ready for service as a dispatch boat in the West Indies. Today's New York Times says Roosevelt "considered that there was not sufficient work for the yacht, so he turned her over to the Navy Department."

Oct. 19, 1906 (Friday)

THE ROOTS OF A RUMOR ABOUT THE SINKING OF AN OCEAN LINER: Some papers yesterday printed news that the liner Campania (above) had sunk, which would, of course, be a terrific tragedy. The reports were entirely false. The root of the rumor goes back to a cable that came from Cape Lion, Costa Rica, to New York at about 5 p.m. Wednesday. It read, in its entirety:
Port Limon, C.R.
Harbaker, New York
Post luckless credulity.
Here's what happened to that information:
1. The address was unclear, but a cable operator recalled that someone named Harbaker worked in a dry-goods importing house in New York. So, the cable went there.
2. Workers there knew that Harbaker had left for Europe six days earlier on the Cunard liner Campania.
3. The workers decided the cable must have come FROM Harbaker.
4. They used a commercial cipher-code book and decided the message meant this:
Port Limon, C.R.
Harbaker, New York: Mail total loss. Crew saved.
5. They interpreted this to mean that the Campania -- en route to Queenstown -- had gone down, with the only survivors being -- astonishingly -- the fortunate Harbaker and the crew.
6. A look at maps led them to assume the "C.R." referred to "Cape Race," and guessed that Port Limon was a fishing village that was too small to appear on any map. The survivors must have somehow reached land near Cape Race.
7. The workers then went home at the end of the work day and talked about the tragedy with their family and friends.
8. The rumor grew. By midnight, the tale had grown large enough so that the following report ended up at various news rooms around the city: The Campania has gone down off Cape Race. Only the crew, the mails and one passenger saved. Only news received in a wireless dispatch from Cape Race to a Broadway dry goods firm.
9. At some newspapers, responsible journalists decided to check things out -- by getting out of bed, for example, a Cunard official, who said nothing of the sort had happened.
10. Other reporters checked with the dry goods firm and decided that Port Limon is really in Costa Rica.
11. BUT, some papers went ahead and printed the wrong story. The Times says, "Two newspapers, by printing the rumor in its incomplete form so alarmed the friends of passengers on board the Campania that the office of the Cunard Company here was deluged by messages of inquiry all day long."
REALITY: The original cable was meant to go to "Harbaker, Philadelphia," meaning a shipping firm called Franklin Baker & Co. The firm had chartered a ship called Post, which had gone down Oct. 1 off Bluefields, Nicaragua. The shipping firm already knew about the loss of the Post. In this message, the captain wanted to let the firm know that the crew had safely reached port.


SUNKEN FRENCH SUBMARINE IS FOUND: Two torpedo boats, four tugs and some small boats from British warships dragged an area off the coast of Tunis and found the French submarine Lutin yesterday morning about 9:30. The French say that two officers and 14 sailors were on board when it went down. The cause is not known, but investigators speculate that the sub went down at too great an angle and somehow acids were released so fast that nobody could release safety weights or a telephone buoy. It will be raised soon. The illustration above, showing the recovery attempt, is from the French Petit Journal.

WOMEN WITH BIG HATS BETTER READ THE SMALL PRINT: For a while now, female patrons (would that be patronnes?) of the Astor Theatre have been reluctant to remove their hats when employees ask them to take them off -- so other ticket holders can see the stage. Now, the back side of the ticket has a message: "This ticket is sold with the understanding and agreement that if a lady uses the same, she will remove her hat upon request of any employee of the management."
A small article on the front page of today's New York Times explains that recent court decisions indicate that a ticket is a contract between the purchaser and the management. And it doesn't matter how much the hat cost.

Oct. 18, 1906 (Thursday)

A COOL INSCRIPTION FOUND IN NUBIA: Archaeologist James H. Breasted (shown at right with his family) of the University of Chicago reveals that he has found some startling inscriptions in part of the huge Temple of Abu Simbel in Nubia (some of which is above). In a pamphlet produced by the university, he describes an interesting find. An inscription appears to describe SNOW.... in an Egyptian record! He considers it a new word. Evidently, Ramses is praying about the Hittites' passage through the northern coutnries, on their trip to Egypt. He hopes they do not encounter "rain and s-r-k". This is a new term, he writes. "The new and unknown word is evidently the Arabic and Hebrew word meaning 'snow.' It was curious, indeed to come to snowless Nubia, to find such a word for the first time."

DID THEY GET THE IDEA FROM THE LAND OF OZ? People in Schenectady, N.Y., woke up on the morning of the 16th to a sight straight out of L. Frank Baum's best-selling "Wizard of Oz." A bunch of cows on the Union College campus were painted GREEN -- from horn to tail. Evidently the students have been upset that the Guernsey cows of President Raymond have been allowed to graze on the grass. The college has investigated, but authorities have come up with no information about the brush-wielding culprits. Yesterday, the president said, "Since this college began the faculty have kept cows and the students have done almost everything imaginable to the poor animals, from locking them in the chapel to putting them in the president's parlor, but this is the first time the cows ever received a coat of paint." The article in the Times did not mention whether or not the students applied a coat of primer. Nor did it identify the color of the milk.

Oct. 17, 1906 (Wednesday)

TRAGEDY STRIKES FRENCH SUBMARINE: The French are worried about their submarine Lutin (above). Evidently it lies about 130 feet below the surface of the waters near Bizerta, Tunis. Fourteen men were on board the submarine, which was engaged in some "plunging experiments." The French began dragging the bottom of the area and think they have struck the vessel. The British, meanwhile, are sending salvage equipment from Malta.

IN DEFENSE OF THE LIMERICK: Today's Post-Standard reprints an item form the current Harper's Magazine that tries to show that the poetic form known as the limerick is, indeed, of "superlative worth and beauty." First, it presents what it considers to be one of the best limericks ever written:
There was a young lady of Niger,
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside
And the smile o the face of the tiger.

To demonstrate the purity of the form, the article shows how Austin Dobson (left) would have written it -- in triolet form (eight lines, with the first line repeated twice):
She went for a ride,
That young lady of Niger;
Her smile was quite wide
As she went for a ride
But she came back inside
With the smile on the tiger,
She went for a ride,
that young lady of Niger.

And then, it shows how Rossetti (by whom I'm sure it meant Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who has an "inability to refrain from refrains," might try and make the same point:
In Niger dwelt a lady fair
(Bacon and eggs and a bag o' soap!)
Who smiled 'neath tangling of her hair,
As her steed began his steady lope.
(You like this style I hope!)
On and on they sped and on,
(Bacon and eggs and a bag o' soap!)
On and on and on and on,
(You see I've not much scope.)
E'en ere they loped the second mile,
Th tiger 'gan his mouth to ope',
Anon he halted for a while;
Then went on with a pleasant smile.
(Bacon and eggs and a bag o' soap!)

THE HOLIDAY SHOPPING SEASON HAS BEEN LONG -- FOR A LONG TIME: Speaking of poetry, here's a little ditty from the Cleveland Leader that shows that Christmas-shopping pressures are as old as the frills:
"The snows that fall, the winds that blow,
The tempests, loud and surly,
Reminded me to tell you: "Do
Your Christmas shopping early."