Rushmore Disappears

In the fictional movie from 2004, Team America, activist Michael Moore wants to tear down the statues, including Mount Rushmore. President Trump is scheduled to be present today for a Fourth of July celebration at the historic site. There is a secret room at Mount Rushmore.

Let us hope that Mount Rushmore does not disappear. This blog entry is about a different Rushmore who disappeared. On July 9, 1955 The Rocky Mount (North Carolina) Evening Telegram carried an Associated Press report on how Howard Rushmore, editor of Confidential magazine, had gone missing. “Police said Rushmore came to Chicago to work on a story in connection with the death of James Forrestal, the former secretary of the Navy and Defense Departments.” [1]

The previous day, July 8, 1955, Rushmore had appeared on The Tom Duggan Show in Chicago. He claimed on air that he was on a secret mission to uncover the communist assassins of former Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. [2]

On May 22, 1949, the body of the man generally regarded as the leading government official warning of the communist menace abroad and within the United States government, James V. Forrestal, was found on a third floor roof 13 floors below a 16th-floor window of the Bethesda Naval Hospital. The last edition of the May 22 New York Times reported the death as a suicide, although the belt, or sash, of Forrestal’s dressing gown was tied tightly around his neck, a suspicious happenstance. [3]

And there it rested (uncertainty about Forrestal’s death) until one “D.C. Dave” (David Martin) uncovered new information recently through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request. Documents from the Navy’s official investigation of the death of America’s first Secretary of Defense which had been kept secret for 55 years were released at last to Martin. Building upon this and other leads, Martin wrote a book, The Assassination of James Forrestal, recently published.

As for the disappeared Howard Rushmore, as the nation speculated that Rushmore was either kidnapped or murdered by communists, he was discovered hiding under the name “H. Roberts” at the Hotel Finlen in Butte, Montana. [2]

——- Sources ——-
[1] “Magazine Editor Reported Missing”, Associated Press. Published in The Rocky Mount (North Carolina) Evening Telegram, July 9, 1955.
[2] “Howard Rushmore”, Wikipedia. Accessed July 2, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Rushmore
[3] “Who Killed James Forrestal?”, by “D.C. Dave” (David Martin). http://www.dcdave.com/article4/021110.html

 

Knights Templar at Mount Rushmore

Little known is that the sculptor behind Mount Rushmore proposed a secret room behind Abraham Lincoln’s hairline. President Trump is scheduled to be at Mount Rushmore this Saturday, July 4th. The secret room there is portrayed in the movie from 2004, Team America. It is also alluded to in the conspiracy film, National Treasure: Book of Secrets. A “Book of Secrets” contains documents collected “for presidents, by presidents and for presidents’ eyes only” and covers such controversial subjects as the JFK assassination, Watergate, and Area 51. A search leads to Mount Rushmore, and a cave containing the legendary Native American city of gold, Cíbola. [1]

The “news” will tell you little or nothing about all this. Instead crude banalities from them serve to distract and hide the real story of Trump, Mount Rushmore, and the secret room.

It is possible the Knights Templar are involved, as anyone who has seen the National Treasure series of movies will realize.

Some say “the order of knighthood as practiced by the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar of the United States and exemplified by the Red Cross degree was brought into existence during the reign of Darius king of Persia, 530 years before the birth of Christ.” Uncertainty prevails however until around 1119 AD, when Hugo de Paganis arrived in Palestine as a crusader. After the martyrdom of Grand Master Jacques de Molay in 1313 AD, Johannes Marcus Larmenius headed the Templars. Thereafter, down to the present, “there has been a regular uninterrupted line of Grand Masters, although since the death of Grand Master Sir William Sidney Smith, which occurred in Paris in 1840, there has been a Grand Master for each country in which the ancient order maintained a Masonic organization.” The charter of transmission is preserved in Paris. The brotherhood has ever been led by the bravest cavaliers. [2]

Bravest cavaliers… Such as Donald Trump? The brotherhood has ever been led by daring knights. Grand Master Trump to visit secret room at Mount Rushmore and learn the national secrets. Will be attended by nine knights brave and true. Rushmore is THE national monument in these times of iconoclast attacks. Sacred symbolism is involved.

——- Sources ——-
[1] “National Treasure: Book of Secrets”, Wikipedia. Accessed June 30, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Treasure:_Book_of_Secrets
[2] “As Knights Of Yore”, Hutchinson (Kansas) News, May 10, 1910.

 

Lost Temple of Solomon

The Sarasota County Times reported on January 5, 1922, “Nobody can say what the future of Palestine is to be.” (This was in 1922, mind you.) “Never governed in the interests of its own people, it has shown for centuries marked and constant degeneration. But for years the Jews have been confident of their ability to restore it to the old-time grandeur.”

Lately the “old-time grandeur” has been intensely sought by archaeologists. King David had secured a “glorious kingdom” circa 1000 B.C. Yet Jerusalem of the 10th century B.C. is “an archeological void.” In 1999, Israeli newspaper Haaretz had a front-page headline: “The Bible: No Evidence on the Ground.” Intensive excavations had revealed the patriarchs’ acts to be legendary. About twenty years later, circa 2019, Haaretz had another front-page story casting doubt on the 1999 headline. Some ancient societies, like King David’s, even though invisible to archeologists, might nonetheless have created sophisticated social structures. [1]

Prince Michael of Albany, controversial claimant to the Scottish throne, in his crucial book, The Knights Templar of the Middle East, says the real secret discovered by the Templars was, when they excavated under Mount Moriah and below the Dome of the Rock, nothing was found. Solomon’s Temple should have been there, but it wasn’t. Prince Michael argues the true Temple was elsewhere, further south, in western Arabia. [2]

“In the year 636 Jerusalem was seized by the Arabian Caliph Omar, and remained under Moslem rule for 463 years, until the leaders of the First Crusade, Godfrey of Boullion, that truly noble knight, and the chivalrous Tancred, carried the Cross into the heart of the city.” A Kingdom of Jerusalem then endured for almost one-hundred years, until 1187. [3] Things have see-sawed ever since. In 1917, British Field Marshal Edmund Allenby captured Jerusalem. A contemporary cartoon in the British humor magazine Punch drew a parallel between Allenby and King Richard the First who had failed to retake Jerusalem. [4]

The Crusader struggles continue, with now some doubt about King David’s kingdom ever having been in Jerusalem. There is also doubt about Melchizedek, Priest of Salem, having been of Jerusalem. Where was Melchizedek’s Salem? “Taking advantage of this uncertainty the Christians have settled it to be Jerusalem. But it happens in this case that a heathen author removes the difficulty. Eupolemus states that Abraham received gifts from Melchizedek in the Holy City of Hargerizim, or of Mount Gerizim.” [5]

——- Sources ——-
[1] “Built On Sand”, by Ruth Margalit. The New Yorker magazine, June 29, 2020.
[2] The Knights Templar of the Middle East, by HRH Prince Michael of Albany. San Francisco: Weiser Books, 2006.
[3] Sarasota County Times, January 5, 1922, page 3.
[4] The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, edited by Jonathan Riley-Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
[5] Anacalypsis, by Godfrey Higgins. London: J. Burns, 1874 (Reprint).

 

Much Speechifying

Much speechifying in the House of Representatives was reported for June 27, 1890. A national election bill was the hot topic. Rep. Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts said “gigantic frauds” in New York City prior to 1870-1871 had now brought forth a proposed nationwide extension. A secret ballot in every district was needed; it was the only way to stop the use of bribe money in elections.

“The negro problem was one of the gravest before the American people,” said Lodge in 1890. But Rep. John J. Hemphill of South Carolina said the bill was unconstitutional because it was sectional and not really national. “A good deal might be said about the New South, but what the country really needed was a New North – a north that will take a view suggested by facts and not by preconceived prejudices; that does not believe it has all the virtue and the rest of the country none; that would not waste all its time in remedying supposed abuses in distant places; that would not think an Anglo-Saxon in the South always in the wrong when he had any trouble with the African.”

Much speechifying also occurred in the Senate. As usual there were weighty matters. It had not been so bad back in 1690 in Boston. There, it had been reported how a night watchman patrolling the streets carrying a tin lantern lit by a candle had encountered “roystering youths” who had “sassed” him. At the time this was considered to have been a shocking incident deemed worthy of being entered into town records.

By 1890, the watchman with his lantern had been replaced by a “splendid force of well equipped and handsomely uniformed police…” There is no mention of if they were still being sassed.

It was thought that John Lingard of La Porte, Indiana suffered from a tumor of the stomach. Suddenly, his condition became much worse. “One morning after a terrible choking and strangling attack he vomited up a large black lizard.” Because the reptile had no eyes and was defective in the limbs, it was thought to have “grown from a mere germ in the man’s stomach.” A few hours after vomiting up the lizard, Mr. Lingard died of blood poisoning.

Homer E. Newton of West Richfield, Ohio made a “foolish wager.” He ate twenty-six hard boiled eggs at one meal, then lingered for three weeks in terrible pain before dying.

(Source: Quincy (Illinois) Daily Herald, June 27, 1890.)

 

A Burp of Earp (Part 3)

About Wyatt Earp it has been said, “Perhaps no figure in American history has endured such an odd ride through fame. He has been portrayed as a magnificent hero and a lowly villain, a glory-seeking braggart and humble introvert avoiding the spotlight.” [1]

These are mental disorder times, as outlined in the previous blog entry. Coroner-virus lockdowns are having stressful side-effects. Now comes further news that “coronavirus panic and associated lockdowns are having ‘devastating’ effects on children, including post-traumatic stress disorder, a British children’s charity warns.” [2] Devastating psychological effects of commanded isolation are being seen in the statue-teardown mania now afflicting younger people. A way to deal with the huge rise in stress is to explore puzzles, such as the Wyatt Earp conundrum.

“Is he the West’s greatest hero? Or was he a crooked, jailbird pimp?” asked the cover of the January 2020 edition of True West magazine. Wyatt Earp a pimp? Around 1869, Earp became infamously active in the “cathouse trade” in Peoria, Illinois. [1]

Somewhere once I read that the gunfight at the O.K. Corral boiled down to a fight for control of Tombstone, Arizona’s brothels.

Reportedly the St. Louis Republican newspaper had, in 1888, published a “wildly fictitious account” about stagecoach-robbing Earps. [3] I was unable to locate the original from the St. Louis newspaper, however the 1888 questionable report was carried by other newspapers of the time. One such seems to have been The Quincy (Illinois) Daily Whig of March 9, 1888:

[In Tombstone the] four Earp brothers, toughs all; Doc Halliday [sic], Frank and Jack Stillwell, Ike Clanton and his brother Billy, Jack McLowry and his brother Bob, Jack Ringo, Bill Dodge and several gentlemen known as Curly, Slim, Shorty, Texas, Buffalo and similar cognomens were frequently seen on the streets together… There were two factions in southeastern Arizona in 1879, one being known as the stage robbers and the other as the rustlers [a.k.a. cowboys]… One day the McLowrys and Frank Stillwell rode into town and put up their horses at a corral on Fremont street. Just as they emerged from the corral the Earps and Halliday [sic] confronted them, and in a minute the two McLowrys, Billy Clanton and Stillwell were dead. [4]

It was the gunfight at the O.K. Corral! (Except, as mentioned, one recent book describes the 1888 account as “wildly fictitious.” [3])

Maybe it is time to tear down the Wyatt Earp statues, since some women might be offended at the reminder that Wyatt had been a whoremaster. Or maybe, instead of tearing down statues, we could build new statues, like statues of Janis Joplin and B.B. King. The iconoclasm disorder lately manifesting among younger people has got President Trump miffed. He tweeted on June 24th:

Very sad to see States allowing roving gangs of wise guys, anarchists & looters, many of them having no idea what they are doing, indiscriminately ripping down our statues and monuments to the past. Some are great works of art, but all represent our History & Heritage, both the good and the bad. It is important for us to understand and remember, even in turbulent and difficult times, and learn from them. Knowledge comes from the most unusual of places!

Amen to that, brother. Knowledge even can come from controversial Wyatt Earp stories.

——- Sources ——-
[1] “Luciano: Long before O.K. Corral, Wyatt Earp’s first shootout was in Beardstown”, by Phil Luciano. Peoria Journal Star, February 22, 2020. https://www.pjstar.com/news/20200222/luciano-long-before-ok-corral-wyatt-earps-first-shootout-was-in-beardstown
[2] “Coronavirus Panic and Lockdowns Causing PTSD in Children, Charity Warns”, by Michael Tennant. The New American magazine, June 24, 2020. https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/36136-coronavirus-panic-and-lockdowns-causing-ptsd-in-children-charity-warns
[3] Ride the Devil’s Herd, by John Boessenecker. Hanover Square Press, 2020.
[4] “Tale Of The Border”, Quincy (Illinois) Daily Whig, March 9, 1888.

 

A Burp of Earp (Part 2)

The coroner-virus lockdowns are “The Biggest Psychological Experiment” says an article in Scientific American magazine. (What if there is some weird psyop going on?, wondered Ersjdamoo in the April 16, 2020 blog entry.) The lockdown “is arguably the largest psychological experiment ever conducted,” wrote health psychologist Elke Van Hoof. [1]

We are living in mental disorder times, evinced most lately by a crowd setting fire to a house in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that was believed to have been linked to sex trafficking and two missing girls. (See short video hopefully viewable above.) In broad daylight, with cameras rolling, a mob commits arson with impunity.

In desperation for some sanity, Ersjdamoo turned to old, dusty newspaper stories. At least in the past collective insanity had not prevailed, was the hope. And then it was found: the true lowdown on the mythologized Wyatt Earp!

Alas! It has since been discovered that reportedly the St. Louis Republican newspaper had, in 1888, published a “wildly fictitious account” about stagecoach-robbing Earps. It was claimed an Earp brother named Julian and an Earp sister named Jessie had been invented whole cloth. [2]

Ersjdamoo had been suspicious about an Earp brother named Julian reported on in an 1896 newspaper article. [3] But this was in a respectable newspaper, and how could there have been fake news way back in 1896?

The story in the respectable newspaper from 1896 includes, “The Earps, Wyatt, Virgil, Warren and Julian had treated themselves to many a killing. But there was no money in murder; nothing but relaxation. So they devoted themselves to holding up the stage.” Tombstone Marshall Virgil Earp was in cahoots with Wells Fargo agent Barshel Williams. When big money was going out by stagecoach, Williams tipped off Virgil Earp. “Guarding” the stagecoach was Warren Earp. “There was never any shooting; it was from all standpoints a family affair, on the part of the Earps.” [3]

“After a robbery the Earps made further money, enlisting themselves with a posse comitatus [a ‘posse’] and chasing themselves.” [3]

“That’s it! Defund the police!” (you might be thinking). But suppose the story found in the respectable newspaper was, in fact, fake news?

“No noose is good noose”, as the saying goes. It is not so easy to escape from these mental disorder times. But just when you had given up, along comes this item: Wyatt Earp was, in fact, a con man, asserts historian Andrew C. Isenberg. [4] Salvation! There is still an unsolved mystery here!

——- Sources ——-
[1] “The Biggest Psychological Experiment”, by Lydia Denworth. Scientific American, July 2020.
[2] Ride the Devil’s Herd, by John Boessenecker. Hanover Square Press, 2020.
[3] “Wyatt Earp, The Referee”. Savannah (Georgia) Morning News, December 6, 1896.
[4] “Wyatt Earp was a prostitute-loving con man and not the hero vigilante as he is portrayed in movies, new book claims”, Daily Mail (UK), July 21, 2013. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2372863/Wyatt-Earp-prostitute-loving-man-hero-vigilante-portrayed-movies-new-book-claims.html

 

A Burp of Earp

An article in the July 2020 issue of Scientific American magazine calls the coroner-virus lockdowns “The Biggest Psychological Experiment.” All sorts of “stressors” are being added to our lives. Scientists are salivating at the prospect of studying increases of mental disorders. [1]

In these mental disorder times, a fun thing to do is to unravel puzzles. One such puzzle was Jesse James, so mythologized that the true person gets obliterated. Key to the puzzle was accessing the Newspaper Archive web site and looking at contemporary newspaper accounts of Jesse James. This resulted in my book, True Tales of Jesse James. The book is very reasonably priced, however it is “hard times” so if you want you can get the gist at the Ersjdamoo Blog by doing a search there on “Jesse James”.

Another good puzzle for these mental disorder times is Wyatt Earp, likewise mythologized so much it is hard to get the real picture. Again, at Ersjdamoo’s Blog, doing a search there on “Wyatt Earp” returns various reports, for example, True Story of O.K. Corral.

Puttering away at the old Wyatt Earp puzzle, we find, in the Savannah (Georgia) Morning News of December 6, 1896, a testimonial from someone who lived in Tombstone, Arizona in the early 1880s (excerpts only):

Wyatt Earp is one of four brothers; two of whom, Julian and Warren Earp, are happily dead and out. The four Earp brothers were abundant about Tombstone in 1881, 1882 and 1883. The community in 1883 assumed a positive attitude toward the Earps and presented a front to that household made up in the main of Winchesters and Colt six shooters. The Earps construed this into a lack of confidence on the part of the Tombstone public. They resented it by shaking the dust of Tombstone from their feet forever. They migrated to the Gunnison country. They were subsequently run out of the Gunnison and Wyatt and Virgil Earp went to California, where Wyatt the other night refereed the Fitzsimmons-Sharkey fight.

There were four Earp brothers, says the testimonial: Virgil, Wyatt, Warren and Julian. There was also a sister, Jessie, with them in Tombstone. Julian was killed in “the Gunnison” by Ike Clanton, who had married Jessie Earp!

The Earps were famous in Tombstone and the Cochise country and all could “pull and make a center shot in less than one-tenth of a second.” [2]

In the early 80s there were two factions in Tombstone. Virgil and Wyatt Earp led one – the Stage Robbers. Johnny Behan, Ike Clanton and Jack Ringo led the other – the Rustlers. The Stage Robbers were in politics Republican, and stood up stages and plundered express companies for a livelihood. The Rustlers were Democrats, and devoted themselves to cattle stealing, murder, whisky, and faro bank as steady pursuits. In these days Johnny Behan was sheriff of Cochise county and Virgil Earp was the marshal of Tombstone. Behan, as stated, belonged to the Cow-thief Democracy party, while Earp robbed stages and voted with the Republicans. [2]

——- Sources ——-
[1] “The Biggest Psychological Experiment”, by Lydia Denworth. Scientific American, July 2020.
[2] “Wyatt Earp, The Referee”. Savannah (Georgia) Morning News, December 6, 1896.

 

800 Marriage Offers

Frank Hinderer, a harness maker of Brooklyn, was lonely. Around 1882 his sweetheart had died and he then vowed never to re-marry. Suddenly though, around early June 1907, feeling forlorn, Hinderer took out a newspaper ad: “I will return to Germany unless I get an offer of marriage by June 21st.” By that day he had received 800 marriage offers from women aged 16 to 70! Overwhelmed, Hinderer couldn’t decide among them all, even though they all were “good and beautiful and true” from descriptions. Exasperated, the fickle Frank Hinderer decided he didn’t want to get married after all. “Guess this has been a lesson to me,” he stated.

The above veracious vignette is found in the June 22, 1907 edition of the New York Evening World, under the heading, “Oddities In News From All Over The World.” Therein is also found how Benjamin Walters of Madison, Illinois killed himself because his wife had fired the cook, Mrs. Amanda Delaplaine.

Ersjdamoo has previously reported on William Howard Taft. The big guy was not yet president in 1907 but was Secretary of War for Teddy Roosevelt. The Evening World reported under its “Oddities In News” heading that Taft had breakfasted on one cantaloupe, one large sirloin steak, boiled eggs, potatoes, toast and coffee.

“Girls Set Price Of $4000 On Love” revealed one item. The Young Ladies Protective Society had decided any man proposing marriage must show he is worth $4000.

Was John C. Chase, Socialist candidate for governor of Massachusetts, worth $4000? He had proposed marriage to Miss Louise Weber, who had been impressed by one of his speeches.

Mademoiselle Aurora, a lion tamer, was seriously injured during a fight with a lioness. “The woman was in the cage with Countess, a hitherto safe lioness, when the beast pounced upon her.”

Herman F.F. Bussier, sixty years old, boarded at a home in Pittsburg. There, he had been seriously ill but was nursed back to health by Miss Theresa C. Conmiller. During the convalescence the two fell in love. Unknown to Theresa’s mother, the two then secretly eloped. “Her mother is waiting with a club for Bussier,” reported the Evening World.

 

Tulsa Massacre Revisited

Yesterday’s local newspaper carried an article on the “Juneteenth” history. The historian, a local lawyer, began with a dig at President Trump wanting to hold a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Juneteenth (June 19th, associated with the end of slavery on June 19, 1865) when Tulsa was where “a notorious massacre of African Americans by whites” had occurred in 1921. [1]

“Massacre” conveys the sense of one-sided carnage, with helpless African Americans in dire need of enlightened liberals to protect them. In reality, both sides were armed and both sides gave as good as they got. On June 1, 1921, The Tulsa Daily World reported a “race war” had raged for hours. “After six hours of race rioting, extending over the entire city, two white men are known to be dead and about a score are known to be injured,” the newspaper reported. The number of “negro” fatalities was not known at the time, but “reports are that several were killed.” [2]

A 2001 Oklahoma state commission examination of events was able to confirm 36 dead, 26 black and 10 white. [3]

The spark which ignited the conflagration was Dick Rowland, an African American who allegedly “assaulted” a “girl” in an elevator, reported the Texas newspaper, the Denton Record-Chronicle, on June 1, 1921. “Assaulted” could mean several things, from accidentally bumping into the young woman to rape or attempted rape. The Texas newspaper also listed “The Known Whites Killed”:

• Carl D. Lopeisch, age 22
• Unidentified white man, age about 28
• F.M. Baker, age 27, “shot in the back with buckshot”
• Unidentified man about 35 years old
• Unidentified white man, age about 30, “shot in the back of the head”
• A 20-year-old man thought to be named Olson at his home in Sapulpa
• An unverified report of a “white girl” killed near a Texaco plant [4]

On October 26, 1881 there had been a gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Both sides gave as good as they got. Calling it a massacre would be misleading, as does calling the 1921 Tulsa incident a massacre.

——- Sources ——-
[1] “Juneteenth and its status as a holiday”, by Brett Kepley. Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, June 21, 2020. Page C-4.
[2] “Two Whites Dead In Race Riot”, Tulsa Daily World, June 1, 1921. Front page.
[3] “Tulsa race massacre”, Wikipedia. Accessed June 21, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
[4] “Martial Law Declared in Tulsa, Oklahoma”, Denton Record-Chronicle, June 1, 1921. Front page.

 

Coffee Drinkers Become Slaves

An article in the New York Evening World of June 20, 1907 weighs in on the continuing debate about the health of coffee drinking. “Like Opium Eaters” is the headline. “For twenty years I used coffee at the breakfast table and incidentally, through the day,” admitted a Boston man. “I craved it as a whisky drinker longs for his morning bracer.” The effect on his nervous system became alarming, but he was hooked. Then, one day, a friend made so bold as to confront the Boston man: “Now, look here, old man,” said the friend. “You are a coffee fiend and it’s killing you.” The friend had once suffered from the same addiction. But then he had found a “blessed relief” – Postum Food Coffee. The Boston man took his friend’s advice and within just one week his health was much restored.

Well, this article was probably an advertisement disguised as news. Still, what does our Oracle of Delphi, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have to say on the coffee question? Since he is infallible in general, maybe farsighted Fauci could gaze elsewhere into his crystal ball to resolve the coffee matter conclusively.

“Oddities In News From All Over The World” reported the Evening World in that same edition. There had been “unusual happenings and singular experiences.”

• “It was not the kiss I objected to,” said pretty eighteen-year-old May Ryan to Judge Sadler in Chicago, “but the way that man scratched my cheeks with his abominable whiskers.” Thomas McCarthy, the culprit, tried to hide his wiry mustache but couldn’t. He was fined $75.
• A rosebush killed a woman by poison. Mrs. Mary Etta Jacobs of Huntington, Massachusetts was admiring the swelling buds on the bush when her hand was pricked by a thorn. Blood poisoning set in and within a week she was dead.
• Policeman stole bather’s clothes. Policeman Walsh of Forest Park, St. Louis discovered fifteen boys bathing illegally in a government fish hatchery. Walsh stole their clothes so they couldn’t escape. Undeterred, the lads boldly “dashed through the park and frightened nurse maids and children till they screamed for help.” Walsh agreed to return the clothes to the boys without penalty so as to calm things down.
• Folks in Pittsburg were scared by sun spots. Air pollution above the Pennsylvania city caused them to forego smoked glasses as they gazed at the sun. They thought all the smoke in the air would be as good as smoked glasses to protect their eyes. Then at noon the city became dark as night and superstitious residents grew alarmed.