Porfirio Díaz opened anew session of the Congress of Mexico outlining his plans for reform, including limiting presidential terms to one.
Tsinghua University opened in Beijing.
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Last edition:
Friday, April 1, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Friday, March 31, 1911. Viva Zapata!
Emiliano Zapata led a group of armed men in commandeering a police station in Villa de Ayala. They then enlisted 100 townsmen in their revolutionary army.
The Mayor of Jerusalem, Raghib al-Nashashibi, and 150 prominent Arabs in Palestine sent a cable to the Turkish parliament, urging the Ottoman nation to stop further sales of land in Palestine to Jewish immigrants.
A prominent Palestinian figure, he would figure in successive regimes, and his second wife would be Jewish, and from France.
Perhaps love conquered all.
He died at age 71 in 1951.
A common sight in cities at one time:
Cleveland Mounted Police. Note the cut of the great coats.
Last edition:
Wednesday, March 29, 1911. The adoption of the M1911.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Wednesday, March 29, 1911. The adoption of the M1911.
In 2024 we noted this:
The Colt M1911 is a John Browning designed semi-automatic pistol that can legitimately be regarded s the greatest handgun ever made, although there are, or perhaps more accurately were, a few other contenders. Other than the mostly John Browning Designed Hi Power, none of the other contenders remain in service somewhere however and the M1911 has by far the longest period of service.
Adopted by the U.S. on March 29, 1911, in 1923 the handgun received some minor modifications, the most significant of which is a curved spring housing which changed the profile of the grip. The trigger was also shortened. In 1924 the modified design started to ship, this month, from Colt. The M1911A1 designation came in 1926.
When we posted this, we actually thought we might have noted the adoption of the M1911 when the centennial of the pistols adoption came up, in 2011, but we didn't. We covered a fair amount of ground regarding it in the thread above, but not really it's whole history.
Of course, that would require a book.
Given the ostensible purpose of this blog, however, we really ought to cover this.
Lex Anteinternet?
The Consolidated Royalty Building, where I work, back when it was new.What the heck is this blog about?The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book I've been pondering. And part of it is just because I'm curious. Hopefully it'll generate enough minor interest so that anyone who stops by might find something of interest, once it begins to develop a bit.
The 1911 is part of the history we're covering, and moreover, it was a brand new pistol in that period.
Vast amounts have been written about the M1911 over its century plus history. Most of that starts right around 1900, when the very first tests of semi automatic pistols took place. But in order to really grasp the M1911 you need to start earlier. . . in 1873.
1873 was the year that the Army officially adopted its first cartridge using revolver, the legendary Colt Single Action Army Revolver. The M1873 replaced a series of cap and ball revolvers that had been the standard sidearms dating back to 1846. We won't get into those, but Colt managed to pioneer really effective revolvers with this series which were widely used by civilians as well, and very well liked. When cartridges started to come in, particularly during the Civil War, it was obvious that soon revolvers would be adapted to take them, and very soon after the war Colt introduced what would become and remain the premier single action revolver, chambered in .44-40. The cartridge closely approximated the black powder load taken by the earlier cap and ball revolvers. The M1873 did have competitors, even in military service, with the primary one being the Smith & Wesson No. 3, which had the advantage of being a break open design allowing for more rapid reloading, but nothing really challenged the Cold Peacemaker for dominance in the U.S. Army, or for that matter, the civilian market.
What was a challenge, however, was that it became pretty clear in the last quarter of the 19th Century that double actions had arrived. Indeed, double action cap and ball revolvers had been produced and used during the Civil War, albeit not in large numbers. The fact that the Army didn't go straight to a double action revealed its real conservatism after the Civil War, which also showed itself in the long arms that it adopted.
By the 1890s black powder was being replaced by smokeless powder, which also yielded higher pressures and therefore higher velocities. As this occurred, a movement towards smaller projectiles occurred, with the thought that the same or better lethality could be achieved with a lighter cartridge. In rifles, this proved to be quite true. Pistols, however, are another matter.
This led to the military adopting the Colt M1892 "New Army" in that year, which was a very well designed double action revolver. The basic design would be used by Colt for decades. Slight improvements to the design would occur over time, leading to the Models 1892, 1894, 1896, 1901, and 1903 for the Army, the Model 1895 for the Navy and the Model 1905 for the Marine Corps, although they were all very similar. Manufacture of the basic design for civilian shooters as well as policemen, in various cartridges, would continue until at least the 1950s, although the original New Army pattern went out of production in 1908..
What the problem would prove to be was the cartridge.
The M1892 took the .38 Long Colt cartridge.
The new handgun was first used in the Spanish American War where there were no complaints regarding it. Soon thereafter, however, it was sent with U.S. troops to the Philippines where it proved to be pretty much completely inadequate. In the hardscrabble guerilla wars that followed U.S. troops landing there, the pistol simply lacked stopping power.
This lead to a series of emergency responses by the Army, part of which was to reissue M1873s, often with barrels refitted to the 5.5" length. The M1873s immediately proved successful, and as a result the Army adopted the Colt New Service civilian double action revolver, a massive .45 Long Colt, as the M1909. Like the New Army, the New Service was a very well designed modern double action revolver, and it was produced for military and civilian use over its long life, with production ceasing in 1946.
As good as the New Service revolver was, it was a stop gap when adopted. The Army was already looking for a semi automatic pistol. Trials had started in 1900 with John Browning's Model 1900, Mauser's C96, and Mannlicher's weird M1894 having been purchased for evaluation. The Browning design was by far the best, and in 1906 it came back in a new version, the Model 1905, to compete against submissions by Bergmann, Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken (DWM), Savage Arms, Knoble, Webley, and White-Merrill. Some of the new pistols, such as DWM's Luger and Savage's John Pederson designed automatic were very good indeed. The Colt 1905, hwoever, wa the best. Browning improved the M1905 and came out with the M1910, and the M1910 and the Savage went on to the final test.
The M1911, the final Colt design, was adopted on this day in 1911. The Navy, and hence the Marine Corps, would not adopt the pistol until 1913.
A fire broke out at the library of the New York State Capitol in Albany at 2:00 am, hours after legislators had adjourned for the night destroying more than 600,000 books, and manuscripts, many of them irreplaceable. A night watchman was killed in the fire.
Last edition:
Tuesday, March 28, 1911. The Lost Patrol
Monday, March 28, 2011
Tuesday, March 28, 1911. The Lost Patrol
The Royal North West Mounted Police laid to rest Inspector Francis J. Fitzgerald, Constables Richard O. Taylor and George F. Kinney, and their guide, Special Constable Sam Carter, who had become lost and perished in the annual 620 mile trip from Fort McPherson to Dawson City.
They had passed away in January.
The long range patrol was discontinued in 1922.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reported:
Thirty-five or 40 Boer farmers who settled some years ago in Mexico and who want to escape the unsettled and troubled conditions in that country, will bring their families with them to New Mexico and found a colony at Los Alamos, San Miguel County.
Last edition:
Monday, March 27, 1911. Habeas Corpus suspended in Mexico.
Labels: 1910s, 1911, Cartoons, Florida, Florida (Fort Lauderdale), Mexican Revolution, Mexico, The Press
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Monday, March 27, 1911. Habeas Corpus suspended in Mexico.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, incorporated.
Editorial cartoon from The San Diego Sun, March 27, 1911, following President Porfirio Diaz’ suspension of the right of habeas corpus in Mexico.
Last edition:Saturday, March 26, 2011
Sunday, March 26, 1911. Soldiers in search of a war.
FILIBUSTER BAND IN JAIL.; Caught Near the Border Equipped for Service in Mexico.
Last edition:
Friday, March 25, 2011
Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factor Fire.
146 garment workers—123 women and girls and 23 men, out of a workforce of 500, died in Manhattan's horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Most of the victims were Italian or Jews immigrants 14 to 23 years old. 62 of the victims jumped to their deaths.
The fabric fire in the fireproof building broke out five minutes before end of shift. The doors to the stairwells and exits were locked to prevent unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft
Oh, but don't worry. . . today's oligarchs have your vest interest at heart. . .
Last edition:
Monday, March 20, 1911. Stolypin resigns, and then is back.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Food and diet
It's really easy to romanticize the past, including the kitchen table of the past, but a recent Freakanomics podcast I listened to suggests that some caution should be involved in that. That's no surprise really, but it is something that we rarely consider.
In our minds, the table of the past was always the place where home cooked meals were served, with fresh food of all kinds. But this really wasn't so. For one thing, refrigeration was not really terribly advanced until the 1930s or so. Prior to that, a lot of people had an "ice box". My father still referred to the refrigerator at the "ice box" in the 1970s, not really switching over to "refrigerator" until the 80s. An ice box isn't anywhere as efficient as a refrigerator.
People compensated for that by buying food every day, but that couldn't really take care of the entire problem. Fresh food simply isn't available every day, everywhere. Frozen food wasn't really fully available year around. Canned food was, in the 20th Century of course, but it wasn't always as good as the canned food we have now. Salted and pickled food made up for part of the problem.
And food variety was necessarily much more restricted. It isn't as if you could expect to buy oranges everywhere easily prior to relatively efficient transportation. Something like a Kiwi fruit would have been unheard of. Even when I was a kid fish came from the river or from a box in the freezer section of the grocery store. In the early 20th Century here fish would have been from the river, and that's about it.
Food related diseases, such as rickets and goiter, that are attributable to a simple dietary deficiencies. Vitamin D is now put in milk to address rickets, but when most people bought milk in glass bottles that was from a local creamery, this wasn't true. Iodine is now in salt, but it wasn't always.
In looking at images from the past, a full farm larder is easy to imagine. But that isn't always the way things were.
An interesting look at an aspect of this, in military terms, is on this Society of the Military Horse thread.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Monday, March 20, 1911. Stolypin resigns, and then is back.
Pyotr Stolypin resigned as Prime Minister of Russia but was back in office by the end of the week at the urging of Czar Nicholas II who was worried about China and who had problems with his proposed successor, Vladimir Kokovtsov.
Last edition:
Thursday, March 16, 1911. A bombing in Juarez.
Labels: 1910s, 1911, Mexican Army, Mexican War, Mexico, Mexico (Juarez), Nevada, Nevada (Las Vegas), Terrorism
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Thursday, March 16, 1911. A bombing in Juarez.
A bomb made of nitroglycerine was set off near the barracks of Mexican federal troops in Juarez, but without effect.
Las Vegas become an incorporated Nevada municipality.
Last edition:
Wednesday, March 15, 1911. .45 ACP Trials.
Labels: 1910s, 1911, Army, boats and ships, Disaster, fishing, Great Lakes, John Browning, Lake Erie, The Practice of Law, Weapons, Weather
Monday, March 14, 2011
Wednesday, March 15, 1911. .45 ACP Trials.
Final trials began to determine whether the John Browning designed Colt Special Army Model 1910 or the Elbert Searle designed Savage Model 1907 would become the first automatic pistol to be adopted by the U.S. Army. Both were chambered in .45 ACP, a Colt designed cartridge.
The Colt Special Army Model 1910 is familiar to history as the M1911. The Savage, less so.
The Colt would go on, of course, to be adopted and is the greatest military handgun of all time. Still superior, in the minds of many (including the author), to any handgun that came after it.
As a minor note on that, I recently went through security in at a Wyoming court and the Sheriffs Deputy manning it was armed with a high end 1911. I asked him about it. He'd been in the Army, and rejected all the 9mms that came after the M1911.
He's not the only one.
The Silver Spray was caught in a snowstorm on Lake Erie, foundered, and its fishing crew froze to death in the lake.
Last edition:
Tuesday, March 14, 1911. Worries in El Paso.
Tuesday, March 14, 1911. Worries in El Paso.
El Paso was jittery, although not without good reason.
Early in the Progressive Era, California adopted initiatives and referendums.
I'm not hugely keen on them myself.
The Japanese Antarctic Expedition reached its limit at Coulman Island.
Last edition:
Monday, March 13, 1911. The Supreme Court upheld corporate income tax as constitutional.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Monday, March 13, 1911. The Supreme Court upheld corporate income tax as constitutional.
The Supreme Court upheld corporate income tax as constitutional.
Last edition:
Sunday, March 12, 1911. Federals prevail at Agua Prieta.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
The distance of things, and self segregation
Sometimes its helpful to actually know what I'm writing about (d'oh!).
In the post The Distance of Things I commented on how remarkably close in proximity Mother of God, Holy Ghost, and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception are, and were not, in terms of transportation in earlier times.
Well, they are close now, to be sure, but Mother of God Church was not a Catholic Church until about 1949, so my analysis there fell sort of flat. Of course, Holy Ghost and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception have always been Catholic Church's, so my analysis still made sense there.
Be that as it may, another church also provides an interesting example of changing times, that being Holy Rosary. Holy Rosary is probably no more than five miles, maybe less, from the Cathedral, but it's north of I70, and it would be hard for people in the neighborhood to get to the Cathedral even now, so I can understand why it is there. Having said that, what surprised me is that, in reading the parish history, how ethnic it originally was.
The church, built in 1918, originally served a principally South Slavs population. Another Catholic Church existed within just a few blocks, but it was principally Polish in population. Prior to the construction of Holy Rosary, the South Slavs attended that church, but they wanted one of their own. That's probably understandable given language differences between the various parishioners. Of interest, a Russian Orthodox Church was and is located very nearby.
What all this shows is that there was a rich population of Eastern Europeans in this section of Denver early in the 20th Century. They all lived in the same area, but they also maintained certain distinctions between themselves. Overall, that's not surprising, but the degree to which the distinctions were maintained perhaps is.
Sunday, March 12, 1911. Federals prevail at Agua Prieta.
Mexican Federal forces prevailed at Agua Prieta, the border town that would figure prominently in the Mexican Revolution.
This contest was one of several in the war, and apparently wasn't given a name.
Part of Mt. Vesuvius' crater collapsed following a severe earthquake.
Last edition:
Saturday, March 11, 1911. "¡Abajo las Haciendas y Vivan los Pueblos!"
Labels: 1910s, 1911, Agrarianism, Art, Bicycles, Disease, Maderistas, Medicine, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Women
Friday, March 11, 2011
Saturday, March 11, 1911. "¡Abajo las Haciendas y Vivan los Pueblos!"
Revolutionaries took the police office in Villa de Ayala, gathered the people and Torres Burgos read to the crowd the Plan of San Luis Potosí. At which occasion Otilio E. Montaño yelled "¡Abajo las Haciendas y Vivan los Pueblos!"
Dr. Simon Flexner announced at a meeting of the Rockefeller Institute the discovery of the cause of infantile paralysis, also known as poliomyelitis or polio.
It was a Saturday.
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