Friday, February 15, 1924. Gun fire and back pay.

U.S. Marines landed at Ampala, Honduras, during the Honduran Civil War.

U.S. Senator Frank L. Greene was wounded by a stray bullet when he was walking on Pennsylvanian Avenue in Washington, D. C.  The shot had been fired in a shootout between bootleggers and Federal agents.  He never fully recovered.

The jury in Joe Jackson's case against the White Sox awarded him $16,000 in back pay.   The Judge, however, decreed that the award was based on perjured testimony and set the verdict aside.  Jackson nonetheless felt himself vindicated.

German emergency powers, which had existed since December 8, lapsed, returning the government to its normal procedures.

Friday, February 8, 1924. Nullifying the Teapot leases.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 8: 1924 President Coolidge signed a resolution ordering the Doheny and Sinclair petroleum leases to be nullified due to the Teapot Dome scandal.

And also:

The first execution by lethal gas was carried out in Carson City, Nevada.  Gee Jon, a Chinese national, was the subject of the execution for a gang slaying.

Texas executed five prisoners on the same day, all African Americans, in the first use by Texas of the electric chair.

The Soviet Union created the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within Azerbaijan.  On January 20, 1990, it became the first part of the USSR to bolt.

Monday, February 4, 1974. Patty Hearst kidnapped.

Patty Hearst, a grandchild of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California by the  Symbionese Liberation Army.  She was 19 at the time.

Hearst right during later bank robbery.

The group had first appeared in November when it had murdered Marcus Foster, the black Superintendent of Oakland Public Schools, and wounded his deputy superintendent Robert Blackburn.

The name of the entity, it might be noted, came from this, according to the organization:

The name 'symbionese' is taken from the word symbiosis and we define its meaning as a body of dissimilar bodies and organisms living in deep and loving harmony and partnership in the best interest of all within the body.

It's hard to seem how murdering public school superintendents fits that supposed goal.  Robert Blackburn, who survived his wounds, noted:

These were not political radicals, They were uniquely mediocre and stunningly off-base. The people in the SLA had no grounding in history. They swung from the world of being thumb-in-the-mouth cheerleaders to self-described revolutionaries with nothing but rhetoric to support them.

Emblematic of the times, the goof ball entity was a kind of sort of Communist terrorist cell that rapidly became disenchanted with "the people" after distributions of food, which it had demanded as a ransom in Berkeley, didn't go well.

In April, the group raided a bank in San Francisco, in which Hearst seemed to take part, although she denied doing so willingly. She nonetheless was convicted due to the actions and served two years out of a seven-year sentence before Jimmy Carter, ever the kind man, had her released.  Bill Clinton pardoned her.

In May the organization moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, where they got into a shootout at a sporting goods store where Hearst, on guard duty, fired shots.  A shootout a couple of days later at a supposed safe house killed six of them.

Hearst was arrested in September 1975, back at a San Francisco safe house.

Hearst, as noted, was convicted, but she claimed she had never participated willingly, and had been raped and threatened while a captive.  Given the nature of the SLA, that's certainly possible. Early on, however, after her arrest she had said that she comported her thoughts to theirs and was given a choice of being freed or fighting with them, and she elected to fight.

After her release, Hearst married Bernard Lee Shaw, a policeman who was part of her security detail during her time on bail.  They had two children.  He died in 2013.

The Provisional IRA bombed a bus on the M62 Motorway in England, killing nine solders and three civilians, including two children.

The Yom Kippur War resumed, but only as between Syria and Israel, with 500 Cuban soldiers joining a Syrian tank unit.  Fighting resumed in the Golan Heights.

Time Magazine featured Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil on the cover, with the caption "The Impeachment Congress.

Blog Mirror: Preziosi on Biden (and Trump) on the Federal Death Penalty

 

Preziosi on Biden (and Trump) on the Federal Death Penalty

Thursday, January 24, 1924. Different reactions to the use of power.

Oilman Edward L. Doheny testified that he had loaned Senator Albert B. Fall $100,000, when Fall was Secretary of the Interior under Harding, breaking open the Teapot Dome Scandal.

New Mexico Senator Albert B. Fall.

Fall's political career would soon come to an end, and he'd serve a year in prison.

Doheny would be indicted, but acquitted.

Khiva fell to the Red Army.

Sister Marie of the Poor, the former Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde of Luxembourg, died of ill health and influenza at age 29.  She had been the last royal of that country to wield real power, which caused her to abdicate after World War One due to her decision to try to steer the country clear of active resistance to the Germans.  Following that, having never married, she had become a nun.

Saturday, January 5, 1924. Ironic?

Sounding like a story line out of an Alanis Morissette song, Eleftherios Venizelos, a Greek hero, was elected as the Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament by his colleagues only to go on and have a heart attack that day during the parliamentary session.  He'd serve in the position for only six days, but would live until 1936.

Walter P. Chrysler introduced his first car, the Chrysler Six Model B-70.

Celia Cooney, age 19, commenced her criminal career with the robbery of the Thomas Ralston Grocery store in Brooklyn.  Her husband, Ed Cooney, drove the getaway car.

Their criminal career ended in April when they were caught.  Ed Cooney lost an arm due to an injury while in prison and recovered $12,000 against the State of New York in 1931 as a result.  The same year they were released.  He died in 1936 of tuberculosis, and she remarried in 1943. She passed away in 1992.

Wednesday, January 2, 1924. Kings in Exile.

Bulgaria gave former King Ferdinand, who had been in exile since 1918, permission to return to Sofia.

He had been living in Coburg, Germany, oddly enough, given that the German monarch was also in exile.  He noted, while there:

Kings in exile are more philosophic under reverses than ordinary individuals; but our philosophy is primarily the result of tradition and breeding, and do not forget that pride is an important item in the making of a monarch. We are disciplined from the day of our birth and taught the avoidance of all outward signs of emotion. The skeleton sits forever with us at the feast. It may mean murder, it may mean abdication, but it serves always to remind us of the unexpected. Therefore we are prepared and nothing comes in the nature of a catastrophe. The main thing in life is to support any condition of bodily or spiritual exile with dignity. If one sups with sorrow, one need not invite the world to see you eat.

Yugoslavia issued an ultimatum objecting to his return.

He in fact did not return, and having taken steps to secure his fortune, lived a quasi bucolic life, marked by family tragedy, and carried on in Germany, dying in 1948.  The prior year, he married a third time, to his secretary, age 26.  

Simon & Schuster, the legendary publishing house, was formed.

The U.S. Winter Olympic team left for the first Winter Olympics.

1924 Winter Olympics including Beatrix Loughran, Joe Moore, Valentine Bialis, Richard Donovan, Harry Kaskey, Charles Jewtraw, and William Steinmetz aboard the ship SS President Monroe on January 2, 1924. 

The Constitutionalist government of Mexico reported that is forces had achieved a victory over the rebels of Adolfo de la Huerta at Zacualpan.

The war in Mexico, and other age-old lethal vices, were making headlines far away:

Flooding in Paris closed the railroads.

Sabine Baring-Gould, composer of "Onward, Christian Soldiers", died at age 89.  Clara Abbott, American businesswoman who had been the first woman to serve on the board of a major American corporation, Abbott Laboratories, died at age 66.

United States Senators Frazier and Johnson were photographed working.

A new flag for Iowa was unveiled.

It is, frankly, ugly.

It had been adopted in 1921. Iowa had lacked one before that.

The Post Insurrection. Part VII. The Insurrectionist.

August 3, 2023

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3.

Called for a Federal takeover?

The defendant will have some sort of initial appearance in court today on the latest charges.

August 15, 2023

Trump Indicted In Georgia

Make no mistake about it, this Georgia indictment is far more serious trouble for Trump than anything that came before it.

He will be convicted.

He cannot pardon himself (he can't anyway, but he'd try) for State crimes.

It's likely that he's going to go to prison.  If convicted, he will be ineligible to serve as President.  It will spark a Constitutional crisis, as he's already shown that he'll try to disregard the Constitution and his followers will as well.

It will go, in that scenario, if he were to be elected, to the Supreme Court.

The Court will rule him ineligible.  It will have to, in part because he will be, and in part because if it does not, it will destroy the Court.

A normal person, including a normal politician, wouldn't put the country through this.

August 16, 2023

But Trump, as we know, is not normal.

One thing I'm glad to see about the Georgia indictment is lawyers included in it. As a lawyer, the entire Trump episode has really drug the profession into the mud, if I'm to put it politely, and that includes the lawyers currently defending him.  

Everyone has a right to a defense, but that doesn't justify a lawyer taking any defense.  Right now, Trump would be best served by lawyers who were telling him to negotiate, not defend, and so would the nation. Instead, he'll fight it out and the lawyers who are providing him with a defense will go home with a tidy sum, probably, fate the nation irrespective.

That this earlier collection may serve time is a good thing.

August 23, 2023

Another weird blathering from the former President.

August 23, 2023

John Eastman, who traded his role as a law professor to being an advisor with a crackpot legal theory in Trump's effort to subvert the vote, surrendered to Fulton County authorities.

It's interesting in that he cited the right of attorneys to advise their clients as a defense.  Attorneys do not have a right to advise their clients, but not with made up crap that justifies anything.

But that's exactly what attorneys in the US have been doing in some instances for years, and with impunity.  If nothing else comes out of this, that this may have reached its limit is at least a good thing.

August 25, 2023

Booked in.

September 1, 2023

John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani are complaining about being indicted for giving legal advice.

Frankly, it's about time that lawyers giving batshit crazy legal advice bore some penalty for it, no matter how polished the crap may be.

Trump's trial in Georgia will be livestreamed, which I feel to be a mistake, quite frankly.

September 6, 2023

Trump has been found liable in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, so when it proceeds to trial on January 15, the only issue will be damages.

September 9, 2023

DA Wills replied to Representative Jim Jordan, giving him a dope slap.

This is thick with irony.  Not only has Willis basically told Jordan he's a butt sitting ignoramus, but Jordan's actions flew in the face of a favored populist idea that states have supremacy over the Federal Government.  Willis actually exercised an example of where the states are in fact supreme, state criminal charges.

It has also been learned that the grand jury wished to bring in broader referrals than actually resulted in charges, including one against Lindsey Graham.  I tend to agree with the prosecutor's choice to limit the number of accused to what was done, but that should be a warning signal to Trump et al. The Grand Jury was obviously irate, and the criminal jury is likely to be as well.

October 5, 2023

Mike Lindell, the "my pillow" guy who became a fanatic Trump backer, is seeing his lawyers attempt to withdraw from representation in defamation suits against him for non-payment.

All lawyers are mercenaries, something clients are oddly inclined to forget.

October 20, 2023

Sidney Powell, lawyer who supported Trump in crackpot election theories, plead guilty to six misdemeanors in Georgia, thereby avoiding trial.

It's likely that part of the deal that lead to this means she'll now turn on her former political champion, who will in turn be dissing her with nicknames soon.

In a court hearing yesterday, one of Trump's lawyers more or less called the court's judicial law clerk stupid, which was a very stupid thing to do. The court ordered an apology.

October 24, 2023

Jenna Ellis has now plead guilty, expressed remorse for having become tied up in the matter, spoke unkindly of Rudy Giuliani.

Where are all those people who were claiming the prosecutor made a strategic error in this matter?

November 14, 2023

While it will make no difference to his followers, former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis' proffer to Georgia prosecutors has been released.  In it, she states that Trump official Dan Scavino told her that Trump would refuse to leave the White House despite losing the election.  There was apparently more damaging information, but it was not released.

This came before the assault on the capitol.

Ellis recounted the exchange coming when she apologized for the lack of success in the absurd post election litigation, something that was never going to work  In reply to this Ellis recounted:

 

"And he said to me, in a kind of excited tone, 'Well, we don't care, and we're not going to leave, And I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said 'Well, the boss', meaning President Trump -- and everyone understood 'the boss,' that's what we all called him -- he said, 'The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power. And I said to him, 'Well, it doesn't quite work that way, you realize?' and he said, 'We don't care.'"

This should really lead to sedition charges against Trump, which have never been filed, in part due to the absurdly slow pace that American justice currently works at.  The fact that hasn't occured is putting Trump in a position to imperil American democracy again.  Should he live through a four-year term, should he be elected to the discredit of the country, it's not impossible to imagine him refusing to leave office.  My guess is that there certainly will be an effort to repeal the Constitutional amendment limiting Presidents to two terms.

November 22, 2023

While I failed to post it at the time, the Court in Colorado found Trump to be an insurrectionist, but then bizarrely found he could remain on the ballot.

Of interest, laymen seem to find this ruling confusing, but it isn't.  His being found to be an insurrectionist was likely a relatively easy call, given the mountains of evidence as to what occured on January 6 and thereafter.  Sooner or later, the glacially slow process will result, I suspect in his being charged with being a seditionist, and he'll be likely to be convicted.  The real question is whether that will occur in 2024, or 2029.

Anyhow, the part that's a big aggravating is the court's leaving him on the ballot, but then Colorado's judges stand for retention and this was somewhat of a safe way out of this for the Judge.  Her ruling was massive, and I've linked it in elsewhere, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find for those wishing to.  I've linked it in the following quote:

Regarding efforts to keep Trump off the ballot, the trial court in Colorado found that Trump did engage in insurrection, but that the office of the President was not included in "officers of the United States" to which the Fourteenth Amendment applies.

A better ruling, however, would have been that he was ineligible to be on the ballot.  Some excellent commentary for that is available here.

Now Trump's legal team is trying to certify the question of his having been an insurrectionist to the U.S. Supreme Court.  My suspicion is the Court won't take it.  If it does, this will prove to be a massive legal mistake, as my guess is that the Supreme Court would uphold the Colorado ruling.  Trump's team, however, must be worried that other courts will give the ruling full faith and credit.

Also, in an effort to have a gag order lifted, Trump found himself faced with a Federal tour de force on what they intend to show at his Federal trial. They intend to maintain that he was an agent in a conspiracy giving rise to the insurrection.

These two things together are really monumental, quite frankly. The Federal Government intends to show that Trump was a seditious insurrectionist. The Colorado trial level judge has already said he was an insurrectionist.  He's now taking this latter matter to the U.S. Supreme Court. . . if they allow the certification, which they likely will not, in an effort to hold that ruling off.

If the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Colorado ruling, it may have the effect of amounting to res judicata on that issue, disqualifying him from the Presidency, and basically getting to a conviction, almost, in Federal Court before he's even tried there.

November 23, 2023

The Colorado Supreme Court is taking up the issue of the 14th Amendment in an appeal from the district court.

My prediction here is that it will adopt the district court's finding that Trump is an insurrectionist, but remand for an order depriving him of a position on Colorado's ballot.

This holding, should it come first, will then be used as a persuasive argument, or even on a full faith and credit basis, in other states.

December 1, 2023

The court in New York reimposed a gag order after a series of harassing Trump statements about the Court and its personnel.

December 7, 2023

The Colorado Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the Colorado 14th Amendment case yesterday.

December 9, 2023

One I managed to miss earlier this week, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose filed amicus briefs in the Colorado suit.

December 11, 2023

Trump will not be testifying at his civil fraud trial today, no doubt because his lawyer want him to shut up.

December 24 2023

The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision that Trump is guilty of insurrection, but remanded the court's decision that he wasn't subject to the 14th Amendment.  He is therefore barred from Colorado's ballot.

The Republican Party of Colorado has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review.  Trump indicates he intends to do the same.

That will prove to be a massive, campaign ending, error, should the Supreme Court take the matter up.

The Michigan Supreme Court rejected a 14th Amendment claim against Trump, holding he can remain on the ballot there.

cont:

Colorado Supreme Court Ruling in Anderson v. Griswold Appealed to U.S. Supreme Court

Denver, December 28, 2023 - The Colorado Republican Party has appealed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision in Anderson v. Griswold to the U.S. Supreme Court. With the appeal filed, Donald Trump will be included as a candidate on Colorado’s 2024 Presidential Primary Ballot when certification occurs on January 5, 2024, unless the U.S. Supreme Court declines to take the case or otherwise affirms the Colorado Supreme Court ruling.

Secretary of State Griswold has commented: “Donald Trump engaged in insurrection and was disqualified under the Constitution from the Colorado Ballot. The Colorado Supreme Court got it right. This decision is now being appealed. I urge the U.S. Supreme Court to act quickly given the upcoming presidential primary election.”

On December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the Colorado 2024 Presidential Primary Ballot due to the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Colorado Supreme Court simultaneously stayed that ruling until January 4, with that stay remaining in place in the event of an appeal.

Key Upcoming Dates:

• January 5: Deadline for Secretary of State Griswold to certify the names and party affiliations of candidates on the 2024 Presidential Primary Ballot.
• January 5: U.S. Supreme Court conference day
• January 20: Deadline for 2024 Presidential Primary Ballots to be sent to military and overseas voters.
• February 12: First day 2024 Presidential Primary Ballots can be mailed to active registered voters.
• February 26: First day of in-person voting for the 2024 President Primary.
• March 5: Colorado 2024 Presidential Primary Day, polls close at 7:00 PM Mountain Time.

cont:

Frankly, the decision above by the Colorado Secretary of State, unless there's more to it that I don't know, is flat out wrong.  Her court has decided that Trump is unqualified. An appeal doesn't matter without an order from the appellate court staying the decision.

She's wrong.

Anyhow, now the Secretary of State for the State of Maine has determined that Trump may not appear on Maine's ballot.

Maine won't be the last state to decide in this fashion, and now there's a split set of decisions. The Supreme Court will have to intervene.

Last Prior Edition:

The Post Insurrection. Part V. Wyoming politicians react to the Trump Indictment and pour another heartly glass of Trump flvored Kool Aid for the voters.

The Post Insurrection. The Defendant. Part VI

Tuesday, December 18, 1923. Liking Prohibition.

Some news that read like news of the decade prior, and some that was truly horrific.

A murder simply over a man staying at a hotel.

Farmer James D. Cummings and draftsman J. Earl McLeod of Washington, Kansas, filed the patent application for the bulldozer.

It's amazing to think that bulldozers did not exist before that time.

The Tangier Protocol was signed between France, Spain and the United Kingdom, creating the Tangier International Zone in Morocco.  It governed the international zone of the city, and would exist until 1956 when Morocco became independent.

Andrew Volstead of Volstead Act fame told a law enforcement conference that the American public was working around towards supporting prohibition.

Tuesday, December 7, 1973. Women join the Coast Guard on a regular basis.

The United States Coast Guard accepted its first regular female members, Chief Warrant Officer Alice T. Jefferson, Yeoman First Class Wanda May Parr and Yeoman Second Class Margaret A. Blackman.

This came about due to the elimination of the Coast Guard's Women's Reserve.

Jefferson had jointed the SPARS in 1943 and remained in the Coast Guard until 1984, when she retired.  She passed away in 2019 at age 96.

The world's most dangerous airline, Aeroflot, crashed is Flight 964 at Moscow's airport, killing 16 out of 75 people on board.

Convicted child murderer Lester Eubanks was released for unsupervised Christmas shopping in Ohio and disappeared.  He remains a fugtive.

The 1976 Wyoming legislature

Reinstated the death penalty and brought in no-fault divorce.

What a bunch of boofadors.

Oh yeah. . . that's also the year we turned out Gale McGee for Malcolm Wallop around here.

Well, that was two years before Coors introduced Coors Light, and you could still drink and drive legally in the state at that time.  We must have been doing too much of it.

Friday, November 22, 1963. The assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 22: 1963  President John F. Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, TX.

President Kennedy was a very popular President in a very difficult time.  A lot of my comments about his presidency here have not been terribly charitable, but he was a hero to many, and some of his calls here have unfairly not been noted.  For instance, he exercised restraint during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost resulted in a Third World War, and he likewise kept the separation of Berlin from escalating into the same, even though his comments caused that crisis to come about.

In spite of repeated speculation about it, it's clear that the assassination was carried out as a lone, bizarre act by Lee Harvey Oswald.  Indeed, the lone actor aspect of that has fueled the conspiracy theories surrounding the event, as people basically don't want to accept that a lone actor can have such a massive and unforeseen impact.

I was alive at the time, but of course I don't remember this as I was only a few months old.  In my father's effects, I'd note, was a Kennedy Mass Card that he'd kept. No doubt, Masses were said around the country for the first Catholic President.

Often unnoticed about this event, Oswald probably had made an earlier attempt on the life of former Army Gen. Edwin Walker, who ironically was a radical right wing opponent of Kennedy's.  That attempt had occured in April. And Oswald killed Texas law enforcement officer J. D. Tippit shortly after killing Kennedy.  Oswald's initial arrest was for his murder of Tippit.

It's fair to speculate on how different history might have been had Kennedy lived.  Kennedy's actions had taken the US up to the brink of war with the Soviet Union twice, but in both instances, when the crisis occured, he steered the country out of it, and indeed his thinking was often better in those instances than his advisers. Under Kennedy the US had become increasingly involved in the Vietnam War, but there's at least some reason to believe that he was approaching the point of backing off in Vietnam, and it seems unlikely that the US would have engaged in the war full scale as it did under Lyndon Johnson.  If that's correct, the corrosive effect the war had on US society, felt until this day, might have been avoided.

All of which is not to engage in the hagiography often engaged in considering Kennedy.  To the general public, the James Dean Effect seems to apply to Kennedy, as he died relatively young.  Catholics nearly worshiped him as one of their own.  In reality, Kennedy had a really icky personal life and was hardly a living saint.  His hawkishness in a time of real global strife, moreover, produced at least one tragic result, and nearly caused others.

Saturday, November 3, 1923. Aviation arrest.

Harold Kullberg, former Royal Air Force captian, arrested aircraft pilot Howard Calvert and passenger Frank O'Neill for performing stunt flying over a city, the same being Akron Ohio.  It was the first arrest for violation of air traffic rules in the United States.  Kullberg had noted the violations while in the air himself.

Kullberg had scored 19 aerial victories in World War One with the Royal Air Force, his efforts to join the U.S. Army as a flyer having been rejected to his being too short.  He died at age 27 in 1924, he died while instructing a student pilot.

Swedish Crown Prince Gustav Adolf married Louise Mountbatten at St. James Palace.

German President Friedrich Ebert refused the request of General Hans von Seeckt for dictatorial powers in law enforcement in Bavaria, which was interesting in the context of the Bavarian government more or less having the same.

Football season was of course on.

The "East v. Central" high school game, somewhere on this day:

Friday, November 2, 1923. A person of interest.

Actress Margaret Gibson was arrested on charges of running a blackmail and extortion ring.  The charges would later be dropped,   She would keep working in the film industry until 1929.

During her career she performed under the names Patricia Palmer, Patsy Palmer, Margie Gibson, Marguerite Gibson, Ella Margaret Lewis, Ella Margaret Arce, Pat Lewis and perhaps others.  She started running into legal trouble in 1917, when she was arrested for vagrancy with allegations of opium dealing.  She was acquitted, but her career did thereafter decline.

On this day in 1923 she was arrested on federal felony charges. As things developed, George W. Lasher told authorities he had paid Gibson $1155 to avoid prosecution for a reputed violation of the Mann Act. Charges were, however, later dropped.

She married in 1935 to oil executive Elbert Lewis. They lived overseas, and the marriage was successful.  In 1940, at age 45, she returned to the United States without her husband for surgery.  World War Two intervened, and they would not be reunited as her husband was killed when the Japanese bombed Socony-Vacuum's oil facility at Penang, Malaysia on March 15, 1942.

She returned to Hollywood in 1964, and at that time, converted to Catholicism.  Only shortly thereafter, she became gravely ill, called for a priest, and confessed to neighbors the February 1, 1922, murder of Hollywood film director William Desmond Taylor.  The murder of Taylor remains officially unsolved, and while there were a handful of suspects, Gibson was never one of them.  In spite of her deathbed confession and her being distraught at the time, there are still those who doubt she committed the crime.  

Gibson with Taylor in a still from the 1914 film "The Riders of Petersham".

Given her conversion to Catholicism, and the sudden deathbed conversion, my guess is that she was the killer.  Suspicion on this is tied to her earlier efforts at extortion, and a flurry of that which occured following the Fatty Arbuckle episode.

U.S. Navy Lieutenant Harlold J. Brow set a new flight airspeed record of 250 mph, making him the first person to fly faster than 400 kph.  His plane was a Curtis racer.

The three Socialist members of Gustav Stresemann's cabinet resigned in protest over the governments refusal to curtail the dictatorial government in Bavaria.

Oklahoma's Governor Walton wasn't prepared to give up.

Ceremonies were held at Arlington National Cemetery for twenty-three U.S. Navy sailors and Marines from the USS Pittsburgh who died of influenza in 1918 and were returned to the United States from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

And it was a busy day on the Panama Canal, like most days.

Panama Canal - West Lirio slide 11/2/23.

Are there lessons from today's entry?  Almost surely.  Redemption after a long journey to one who ultimately pursued, but also life cut short.