The return of Gunboat Diplomacy?

What the crud?

Saturday, April 12, 1924. Madeline Blair and the USS Arizona.

The Chief Radio Operator of the USS Arizona discovered 19 year old prostitute Madeline Blair on board the ship when she lingered too long on deck at a water cooler, called a scuttlebutt, while the ship was off of Balboa, Panama, getting ready to pass through the canal.

She had been allowed to stow away and hide on board by sympathetic sialors who bought her sad tale of poverty and the need to go to California.  On board she was hidden in an unused genetaror compartment and charged $10.00/day for lodging and meals, a huge sum at the time, by ship's cooks and she plied her trade at $3.00 per trick.

Going on deck only at night, and dressing in dungarees and blue sailor's work shirt, she'd been earlier discovered by a sailor while watching a movie from a searchlight platform when he'd reached into the breast pocket of the shirt she was wearing and detected her correct anatomy.  While shocked, that sailor had kept his discovery to himself.  The Chief Radio Operator did not.  She was put ashore and then returned to New York on hte Panama Railway Company SS Cristobal, which charged the Navy for her fare.

Twenty-three sailors would be court-martialed and Blair would write her story for The San Francisco Examiner in 1928.

Dawes met with Mussolini, who expressed support for the Dawes Plan.

The House passed the Japanese Exclusion Act.

Friday, April 11, 1924. Closing borders.

920s, 1924, Asia, Blue Laws, Casper Wyoming, German Weimar Republic, Government, Immigration, Japan, Monarchy

Monday, January 21, 1924. Death claims bloody Lenin.

 

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known to history as Vladimir Lenin, the illegitimate leader of a "soviet" state the Russian people had not wished to come into existence, died, having brought untold misery to millions.

The monster was 53 years of age.

His father had died at 54, so there's likely a genetic component to his "stroke", but in actuality, the exact cause of his death is not really known.

Parliament passed a no confidence motion in the government of Stanley Baldwin.

British railway workers went on strike the same day.

Mexican Federal troops crossed the US into Mexico, repeating the event which had lead Pancho Villa to attack Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916.

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.

Friday, January 1, 1915. Mexican land reform.

A Mexican land reform program was announced by the Carranza administration which promised to distribute land to those most in need.  In reality Carranza was reluctant to implement land reform and therefore it was done haltingly at best during his administration, in spite of the topic being a major cause of the Mexican Revolution.

The Panama–California Exposition officially opened in San Diego in spite of World War One going on in Europe, Africa and to some degree in Asia.  President Wilson opened the event by pushing a telegraph button in Washington, D.C. that turned on the power and lights at the park.

The exposition celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, which of course has been much in the news recently.

The bizarre and misnamed Battle of Broken Hill took place in New South Wales, Australia, when Muslims Mullah Abdullah and Gool Badsha Mahomed took shots at a passing train in aid of what they believed to be a jihad ordered by the Ottoman sultan.  The attacked killed several passengers and provoked a military and police response which killed the two perpetrators.

The HMS Formidable was sunk by a German U-boat U-24 off of Dorset.

Last edition:

Monday, December 28, 1914. Ottoman advance slows.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, 1914 at the movies, Battle of Sarikamish, Movies, Ottoman Army, World War One

Saturday, August 15, 1914. The Panama Canal opens for traffic.

The Panama Canal opened for traffic.

The SS Ancon, pictured above on this day, was the first ship through.

Theodore Roosevelt, who would only have been in his 60s, who had caused it to be built, didn't live to see the great event.  Neither did Woodrow Wilson, who had carried through with it.  William H. Taft, however, remained very much alive.

Sgt. Patrick N. Cullom of the Colorado National Guard testified that the soliders in his company had shot and killed Union activist Louis Tikas and two others at Ludlow.  He testified they were attempting to escape at the time.

Last edition:

Friday, August 14, 1914. First bombing raid.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Aircraft, Battle of Lorraine, Battle of the Frontiers, French Air Force, French Army, German Army, German Kriegsmarine, Indian Ocean, World War One

Friday, March 27, 1914. "Any kind of fighting you wish".

"Any kind of fighting you wish".  So declared the Cheyenne paper.

Villa scored a victory and recognized Carranza as chief, for at least the present.

And some employers had photographs taken of their employees.

Employees of Augustus Pollack Crown Stogie Factories, Wheeling, W.Va.

The F.A. Ames Mfg. Co., Owensboro, Ky.

Last prior:

Wednesday, March 25, 1914. Villa repulsed.

Wednesday, March 3, 1909. Roosevelt's last day in office.

It was Theodore Roosevelt's last full day in office.

Roosevelt was stepping down after having only ran once. By custom, although not by law, he was allowed to serve two full terms.  He's very soon come to regret not doing so.

On this day, he accomplished a number of things, not seemingly taking a last day of rest.  One of the things he did was to sign a bill creating the Mount Olympus National Monument in the State of Washington.

Another thing was to issue Executive Order 969 which stated:

In accordance with the power vested in me by section 1619, Revised Statutes of the United States, the following duties are assigned to the United States Marine Corps:

(1) To garrison the different navy-yards and naval stations, both within and beyond the continental limits of the United States.

(2) To furnish the first line of the mobile defense of naval bases and naval stations beyond the continental limits of the United States.

(3) To man such naval defenses, and to aid in manning, if necessary, such other defenses, as may be erected for the defense of naval bases and naval stations beyond the continental limits of the United States.

(4) To garrison the Isthmian Canal Zone, Panama.

(5) To furnish such garrisons and expeditionary forces for duties beyond the seas as may be necessary in time of peace.

Theodore Roosevelt.

The White House

This doesn't seem that radical, but it was actually a limiting order and was intended to be.  It made the Marines, which were just beginning to expand their role, more like conventional Marines in other nations.  The order would not remain in place.

On Naval matters:

Today In Wyoming's History: March 3: 1909  Order placed for the USS Wyoming, BB-32, to be built.

The Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 was ratified by the Senate.

The Food and Drug Administration approved using sodium benzoate as a food preservative, even though a ban had been recommended the prior July.

Gatun Dam Lock site.

Culebra Cut, Rio Grande in foreground.