Marines landed at Nanjing to patrol near the university and to protect Americans in the vicinity.
Costa Rica, unhappy with the League of Nations failure to address regional issues, withdrew form the body.
The French mandate states of Aleppo and Damascus were united in the State of Syria.
Last edition:
President Taft opened the New Year by shaking the hands of 5,575 people visiting the White House.
Ick.
Railroads operating in the American South implemented a quota against further hiring of African Americans, pursuant to an agreement with the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, providing that "No larger percentage of Negro trainmen or yardmen will be employed on any division or in any yard than was employed on January 1, 1910".
Last edition:
The Dominican Republic signed a convention with the US to allow the US to control its customs' revenue, which continued until 1941.
It read:
Convention between the United States of America and the Dominican Republic, Signed at Washington, December 27, 1924
Whereas a convention between the United States of America and the Dominican Republic providing for the assistance of the United States in the collection and application of the customs revenues of the Dominican Republic, was concluded and signed by their respective Plenipotentiaries at the City of Santo Domingo, on the eighth day of February, one thousand nine hundred and seven, and
Whereas that convention was entered into to enable the Dominican Government to carry out a plan of settlement for the adjustment of debts and claims against the Government; and
Whereas, in accordance with that plan of settlement, the Dominican Republic issued in 1908, bonds to the amount of $20,000,000, bearing 5 per cent interest, payable in 50 years and redeemable after 10 years at 102–½, and requiring payment of at least 1 per cent per annum for amortization; and
Whereas additional obligations have been incurred by the Dominican Government in the form of the issuance, in 1918, of bonds to the amount of $5,000,000, bearing 5 per cent interest, payable in 20 years, and redeemable at par on each interest date as the amount of amortization fund available on such interest dates will permit, and requiring payment of at least 5 per cent per annum for amortization; and in the form of the issuance of bonds, in 1922, to the amount of $10,000,000, bearing 5-½ per cent interest, payable in 20 years, and redeemable after 8 years at 101. and requiring payment after such period of at least $563,916.67 per annum for amortization; and
Whereas certain of the terms of the contracts under which these bonds have been issued have proven by experience unduly onerous to the Dominican Republic and have compelled it to devote a larger portion of the customs revenues to provide the interest and sinking fund charges pledged to the service of such bonds than is deemed advisable or necessary; and
Whereas it is the desire of the Dominican Government and appears to be to the best interest of the Dominican Republic to issue bonds to a total amount of $25,000,000, in order to provide for the refunding on terms more advantageous to the Republic of its obligations represented by the bonds of the three issues above mentioned still outstanding and for a balance remaining after such operation is concluded to be devoted to permanent public improvements and to other projects designed to further the economic and industrial development of the country; and
Whereas the whole of this plan is conditioned and dependent upon the assistance of the United States in the collection of customs revenues of the Dominican Republic and the application thereof so far as necessary to the interest upon and the amortization and redemption of said bonds, and the Dominican Republic has requested the United States to give and the United States is willing to give such assistance:
The United States of America, represented by Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State of the United States of America; and the Dominican Republic, represented by Señor José del Carmen Ariza, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Dominican Republic in Washington, have agreed:
Article I
That the President of the United States shall appoint, a General Receiver of Dominican Customs, who, with such Assistant Receivers and other employees of the Receivership as shall be appointed by [Page 664]the President of the United States in his discretion, shall collect all the customs duties accruing at the several customs houses of the Dominican Republic until the payment or retirement of any and all bonds issued by the Dominican Government in accordance with the plan and under the limitations as to terms and amounts hereinbefore recited; and said General Receiver shall apply the sums so collected, as follows:
First, to paying the expenses of the receivership; second, to the payment of interest upon all bonds outstanding; third, to the payment of the annual sums provided for amortization of said bonds including interest upon all bonds held in sinking fund; fourth, to the purchase and cancellation or the retirement and cancellation pursuant to the terms thereof of any of said bonds as may be directed by the Dominican Government; fifth, the remainder to be paid to the Dominican Government.
The method of distributing the current collections of revenue in order to accomplish the application thereof as hereinbefore provided shall be as follows:
The expenses of the receivership shall be paid by the Receiver as they arise. The allowances to the General Receiver and his assistants for the expenses of collecting the revenues shall not exceed five per cent unless by agreement between the two Governments.
On the first day of each calendar month shall be paid over by the Receiver to the Fiscal Agent of the loan a sum equal to one twelfth of the annual interest of all the bonds issued and of the annual sums provided for amortization of said bonds and the remaining collection of the last preceding month shall be paid over to the Dominican Government, or applied to the sinking fund for the purchase or redemption of bonds or for other purposes as the Dominican Government shall direct.
Provided, that in case the customs revenues collected by the General Receiver shall in any year exceed the sum of $4,000,000, 10 per cent of the surplus above such sum of $4,000,000 shall be applied to the sinking fund for the redemption of bonds.
Article II
The Dominican Government will provide by law for the payment of all customs duties to the General Receiver and his assistants, and will give to them all needful aid and assistance and full protection to the extent of its powers. The Government of the United States will give to the General Receiver and his assistants such protection as it may find to be requisite for the performance of their duties.
Article III
Until the Dominican Republic has paid the whole amount of the bonds of the debt, its public debt shall not be increased except by previous agreement between the Dominican Government and the United States.
Article IV
The Dominican Government agrees that the import duties will at no time be modified to such an extent that, on the basis of exportation and importations to the like amount and the like character during the two years preceding that in which it is desired to make such modification, the total net customs receipts would not at such altered rates have amounted for each of such two years to at least 1–½ times the amount necessary to provide for the interest and sinking fund charges upon its public debt.
Article V
The accounts of the General Receiver shall be rendered monthly to the Ministry of Finance and Commerce of the Dominican Republic and to the State Department of the United States and shall be subject to examination and verification by the appropriate officers of the Dominican and the United States Governments.
Article VI
The determination of any controversy which may arise between the Contracting Parties in the carrying out of the provisions of this Convention shall, should the two Governments be unable to come to an agreement through diplomatic channels, be by arbitration. In the carrying out of this agreement in each individual case, the Contracting Parties, once the necessity of arbitration is determined, shall conclude a special agreement defining clearly the scope of the dispute, the scope of the powers of the arbitrators, and the periods to be fixed for the formation of the arbitral tribunal and the several stages of the procedure. The special agreement providing for arbitration shall, in all cases, be signed within a period of three months from the date upon which either one of the Contracting Parties shall notify the other Contracting Party of its desire to resort to arbitration. It is understood that on the part of the United States, such special agreements will be made by the President of the United States by and with the advice and consent of the Senate thereto, and on the part of the Dominican Republic, shall be subject to the procedure required by the Constitution and laws thereof.
Article VII
This agreement shall take effect after its approval by the Contracting Parties in accordance with their respective Constitutional methods. Upon the exchange of ratifications of this convention, which shall take place at Washington as soon as possible, the Convention between the United States of America and the Dominican Republic providing for the assistance of the United States in the collection and application of the customs revenues, concluded and signed at the City of Santo Domingo on the 8th day of February, 1907, shall be deemed to be abrogated.
Done in duplicate in the English and Spanish languages at the City of Washington this 27th day of December, nineteen hundred and twenty-four.
Charles Evans Hughes
[seal]
J. C. Ariza
[seal]
The Marines had withdrawn from the country only three months prior.
Last edition:
Great American illustrator, author and sculptor, Frederic Remington, died at age 48 of a burst appendix. He was operated upon, but it was too late.
Remington's role as a chronicler of the American West has been enduring.
Last edition:
The USS Utah was launched.
She'd be lost at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Fifty eight of her crew died as a result. She was not recovered and remains in the harbor near Ford Island.
Last edition:
Last edition:
Another new page.
This one has been in draft for years. I just never got around to posting it, and kept adding to it.
Former Albanian Prime Minister Ahmet Zogu, the future King Zog the First, led an invasion of Albania with guerrillas backed by Yugoslavia.
And, it was a Saturday.
Last edition:
France rounded up over 300 communists in raids on their headquarters, including some 70 foreign ones.
Prime Minister Herriot stated: "There are too many foreign communists in France who forget their duty to the country that has given them asylum. They are indulging in political demonstrations, and we will not tolerate it, we will not let them meddle in our political life. If we meet with resistance we will break it, and we will deport as many as necessary."
The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (Organisation Internationale de la vigne et du vin; OIV), and international organization of wine making countries, formed.
The first fax was sent across the ocean, transmitted from New York City to London. The transmission was a photograph of Calvin Coolidge.
Last edition:
Next year with be a Jubilee Year in the Catholic Church. For some reason, the Church felt it needed a mascot for this.
This is what it came up with:
How does a 2,000 year old institution in possession of much of the Western World's great art, come up with something so juvenile, and indeed something that looks like its out of Pokemon?
In announcing this, Archbishop Rino Fisichella stated that the cartoon imagine, titled "Luce" (light in Italian) was inspired by the Church's "to live even within the pop culture so beloved by our youth." This presents the classic problem of the elderly, now the Baby Boomers, recalling the desires of "youth" in terms of when they were fairly youthful themselves. Indeed, in my mind it brings to mind attending the "Teen Life Mass", or whatever it was called, that used to be held on Sunday evenings. I generally tried to avoid it, but when I did, you'd find a guitar band with bongos for the music, lead by a Boomer, and a bunch of aged Boomers who would sway and whatnot to the music.
In contrast, if you hit some Masses with a lot of young people, you'd find young women, some down in their teens, wearing mantillas.
I'm pretty convinced that in 2024, with ready access to the Internet, and all the news that's on it, combined with all the sewage that's washed up with it, such as horrific political arguments, the revival of racism, far right and far left extremist, Hamas murder and rape of young people in Israel, an aged geezer in the Kremlin trying to revive the Soviet Union, and young women prostituting themselves on TikTok, a childish cartoon from the 1980s isn't really going to win hearts and minds. Indeed, its even worse than the Comic Sans Serif font and 1970s vintage art that was officially used for the Synod on Synodality. And it gives emotional support to the Orthodox who are looking for reasons not to come back into the Church, even if superficially. This sure doesn't look like something Saints Cyril and Methodius would have passed out.
I've long held, and have stated it here, that Western culture had experienced Post World War Two materialism and found it lacking, and that the generations that have come up in the wake of the Baby Boomers are struggling to through the cultural innovations of the 1960s and 1970s off. We don't believe that "Greed is good" or that the Sexual Revolution was freeing. The problem is that so much was destroyed that recovering is hard, particularly when the aged hand remains on the tiller. Often that aged hand reaches out with what it thinks the young want, not grasping what that is, and actually making things worse.
This cartoon is really bad. Somebody should look around the Vatican and see if something serious might be available. The young Catholics in blue jeans, the mantilla girls, and myself, will all be thankful.
Postscript
I'm hating this image slightly less after some Twitter person made some interesting riffs off of it, but I still don't like it.
It was Saturday.
Sultan bin Saqr Al Qasimi II invaded the Emirate of Sharjah resulting in the overthrow of Khalid bin Ahmad Al Qasimi, who had been the Emir since 1914.
Sharjah was one of the Trucial States under British protectorate status. It is now one of the United Arab Emirates.
He'd find his rule ineffective as he was ignored by Beudoins and Khalid retained support. He remained the titular rule, however, until his death in 1951.
The Royal Air Force introduced its Meteorological Flight Service.
Éamon de Valera was sentenced to a month in prison for entering Ulster illegally.
Frontier lawman Bill Tilghman, age 70, was shot and killed by drunken prohibition agement Wiley Lynn, who obviously wasn't that dedicated to the cause of his employment. Tilghman would lie in State in the Oklahoma state house. Lynn would escape conviction, pleading self defense, but was killed in a gunfight in 1932.
The days headline did, and did not, read like today's.
