101, officially, (it may have been 121) people were killed and 175 injured in a train collision of two trains belonging to the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway near Nashville. Many were black munitions workers on their way to work in Nashville.
The locomotives were actually repaired and put back into service, being retired in 1947 and 1948.
It is the worst railroad accident in American history.
Elsewhere, and more specifically in Alberta, American aviatrix Katherine Stinson made the first airmail flight in Western Canada, flying a mail sack from Edmonton to Calgary.
Stinson had been flying for six years at the time and had already set air records. Indeed, she's figured on our blog before. She would later become an architect and worked in that profession for may years.
In other news of the day, July 9, was day two of the Cleburne County Draft War in Arkansas. The small armed conflict involved draft resisting members of the Jehovah's Witnesses who became involved in a gunfight with local law enforcement and then fled into the rural hills, picking up other draft resistors on the way. The Arkansas National Guard responded to search for them. The event would end in a few days, after the loss of one life in the conflict, when the resistors surrendered. This was one of three "draft wars" in Arkansas, which was highly rural and retained strong aspects of the Southern ruralism at the time, which would occur during World War One.
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