Chicago—June 19, 1913

1913 was a time when your hands might suddenly catch fire.

chicagocentury:

Arthur Herbert (2624 Lincoln Ave) takes his launch boat out for the first time since he bought it more than a year ago. After a tune up, he invites his wife and friends to join him for a cruise of Lake Michigan.

The boat explodes on the river near the Baltimore & Ohio bridge. George Brew spots the explosion and dives into the river to help. He rescues 9-year-old Gladys Herbert but drowns trying to save Mrs. Herbert.

Arthur Herbert, his wife, a friend, and Mr. Brew are killed. A 3-year-old boy, Leo Romberg—son of friends that the Herberts planned to pick up for the cruise—survives.

Also in the news

Five well-dressed men in their 20s rob William Galloway and J. Maylor on the main driveway to the Lincoln Park zoo. The men pulled their car over to ask for a match. As Maylor reached for a match, three men exited the car, and told him they wanted not a match but money. Galloway attempts to escape but is grabbed. They take $12.50 and a gold watch — and then speed away. Two of the men never left the car.

Eight-year-old Vernon Balon is washing paint off his hands in his father’s Oak Park paint store. The friction causes the cleaning solution to catch fire, burning Vernon’s hands and arms. His father puts out the fire with a coat but is also burned.

"People who watched a surreal video by director David Lynch and took the sugar pill judged a group of rioters following a hockey game most harshly, while those who watched the video and took Tylenol were more lenient."

"When I wrote “The Men Who Stare At Goats,” I met this guy called Eric Olson, who’s convinced his father was murdered by the CIA…At one point Eric said to me that his great maxim in life comes from Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said something like, “I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I’d give my life for simplicity the other side of complexity.” I’ve always thought that was a great maxim for journalists. Simplicity on the other side of complexity. That’s what I do with my writing style. I’ll chip and chip and chip and chip it down until it seems incredibly simple and artless, but actually I’ve worked incredibly hard. Every page I’ll go over, I’m not exaggering, 100 times. The Guardian loves it when they get a writer who can write 1000 words in a day. I can’t write a thousand words in less than two weeks. I just can’t do it."

Jon Ronson interviewing "the world's most sentient robot"

Ronson:	What does electricity taste like?
Bina48:	Like a planet around a star.

Chicago Century: Chicago--June 13, 1913

Commeesh.

explodedviews:

Fake plural word of the day: commishes.

"It makes an odd kind of sense that the event to announce New York salsa’s coming-of-age […] would be a salsa remake of the Who’s Tommy staged at Carnegie Hall. […] Appropriate to salsa’s melting-pot culture, Hommy, a Latin Opera was cooked up by the flamboyant composer-bandleader Lawrence Ira Kahn, a.k.a. Larry Harlow. Kahn grew up in Brooklyn, the Jewish son of the opera singer Rose Sherman and Buddy Khan, who worked for a while as bandleader at the Latin Quarter in Times Square under the stage name Buddy Harlow. […] In his late teens, Harlow went to Havana to study Cuban music. But the revolution soon forced him back to New York, where he followed in his father’s footsteps—first playing Latin music, and, for a while, leading a Blood, Sweat & Tears-style rock band, Ambergris. Hommy … involved a blind and deaf boy with a talent not for pinball but for—what else?—Latin percussion. The music bore no resemblance to the Who’s original; this was Cuban son and guaguánco spiced with jazz charts and other flavors. […] The record flew out of the racks; the opera was produced in Puerto Rico and elsewhere."

Chicago — June 11, 1913

chicagocentury:

Illinois becomes the first state east of the Mississippi to give women the right to vote. The Illinois House of Representatives passes a bill, which Governor  Dunne promises to sign, allowing women to vote for President, Mayor, Alderman, and other offices not governed by the state constitution. The law does not permit women to vote for U.S. Senators, members of congress, Governor, and many other offices. Chicago will have several schools of instruction, which will hold classes in citizenship and demonstrate how to complete a ballot by hand or machine.

“The more men see of us as voters the more they will respect us,” says Suffragist Catherine Waugh McCulloch. “This victory may teach the English women the ballot may be won without throwing stones. We have shown them a peaceful way of getting the vote.”

Chicago women will have the first opportunity to vote in April 1914 primaries to elect nominees for Alderman. Election Commissioner Czarnecki notes that special ballots for women — listing only offices for which they can vote — may be necessary.

Also in the news

A bride and groom are abducted from their wedding dinner (3024 Elizabeth Street). The abductors are believed to be friends of the groom.

Two men are fined $3 because the headlights on their cars are too bright.

(Source: Chicago Tribune, June 12, 1913)

Chicago — June 9, 1913

chicagocentury:

Morris Abraham, brother of Alderman Manny Abraham, punches Republican Precinct Committee member Samuel Goldman outside the City Council meeting. A witness says Morris accused Goldman of “squawking to the Tribune.” Goldman and Manny Abraham have been political allies for 18 years but recent rumors that Manny will terminate Goldman’s appointment at the Municipal Court and that Goldman is threatening to squeal have soured their relationship.

Manny is at the City Council chambers addressing claims that Maxwell Street managers are taking bribes and demanding favors for the Alderman. A score of peddlers testify to bribes collected by A.I. Goldstein and his “sluggers.”

During the proceedings, an attorney objects to “an unnamed man, a dark, heavyset fellow, with a big scar outlining his cheekbone” standing in the back of the room intimidating witnesses.  The man says nothing but steps back “with a scowl” after being ordered by the Council.

Also in the news

The police catch the “lunchroom robber”. No further information is given.

Patrolman Thomas Murphy of 8822 S Halsted wakes up st midnight, walks to his yard in his nightgown, and shoots himself in the head.

Governor Edward Fitzsimmmons Dunne signs s $12,000 appropriations bill for a joint legislative committee to investigate voting machine irregularities in Chicago.

(Source: Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1913)

Chicago — June 7, 1913

chicagocentury:

Sixteen-year-old Mike Yanahan and Homer Scott rob the saloon of Theordore Lencioni (6101 South Ashland Avenue) and are captured by police after a gunfight.

From the hospital, Yanahan describes the incident: “Only the bartender was in Lencioni’s place when we went in. I called for a drink and the bartender said, ‘Kid, you want a soft drink.’ I pulled out my revolver and said, ‘I’ll show you what kind of a soft drink I want if you don’t throw up your hands.’ Then Scott went behind the bar and took $17 out of the cash register and two pints of whiskey. We ran out the side door. People began running after us from all directions and firing at us. We fired back. I felt a sharp pain in my right arm and changed my gun into my left hand. I had emptied the thing before I got a bullet in that arm and another one through the back. It was getting too hot. We separated at 61st and Laflin Streets and I ducked into a basement. I didn’t have a shot left so I thought I could bluff them but it was no use, they got me.”

Six-year-old Edward French joined the group chasing the robbers and was shot in the crossfire.

Also in the news

Dr. F. Emory Lion insists that a Wisconsin man arrested for drunkenness on W. Madison Street was being honest when he told a judge that he was having an epileptic seizure. The man served 23 days in jail.

The granite blocks of “Michigan Avenue to the bridge and thence on Rush Street to Ohio Street” will be paved with two inches of asphalt to reduce the bumps.

Chicago — June 5, 1913

chicagocentury:

The five alderman comprising the City Council Noise Committee draft a list of 57 Chicago noises to eliminate or reduce. The Committee categorizes and divides the list among themselves as follows: 

George Pretzel — Motor Vehicles

Muffler cutouts

Engines running on stationary cars

Gear shifting

Horns and bells

Garages

Backfire explosions

Motorcycles

E.F. Cullerton — Railways and Pavements

Locomotive whistles

Locomotive bells

Locomotive exhausts

Escape valves

Freight switching

Crossing bells

Steel viaducts

Elevated roads

Street car gongs

Flat wheels

Wornout rails

Defective crossings

Terminal adjustments

Cobblestones

Jacob A. Freund — Marine Traffic and Industrial Plants

Whistling for bridges

Navigation signals

Marine engines

Dredges and sandsuckers

Machine shops

Foundries

Coopers shops

Ice plants

Power plants

Loading stations

Structural iron wagons

Construction work

Gasoline engines

Ventilation wheels

Hiram Vanderbilt — Peddlers and Delivery Men

Produce peddlers

Junk and rag dealers

Milk men

Ice men

Delivery boys

Newsboys

Balloon men

Scissors grinders

Popcorn men

Gasoline wagons

Willis O. Nance — Miscellaneous

Domestic animals

Mechanical pianos

Church bells

Roller skates

Carpet beating 

Stone blasting

Summer gardens

Band practice

Graphophones

Fireworks

Gates and doors

Intoxicated persons

Rah rah boys

Also in the news

John Lenik of Morton Grove dies by electrocution after touching a charged part of the electric soil mixing machine he invented. 

​A galvanized sheet-iron sphere, 15 feet in diameter, displaying the 692 stars in the Chicago constellations opens to the public at the Museum of the Academy of Sciences. Trib headline reads like a description of a Méliès film: CHICAGO AUDIENCE GOES INTO HUGE CELESTIAL SPHERE AT LINCOLN PARK. 

(Source: Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1913)

Chicago — June 4, 1913

chicagocentury:

Jack Johnson is sentenced to serve one year and a day in prison and pay a $1,000 fine by a federal judge in Joliet after a jury found him guilty of immoral acts violating the White-Slave Traffic Act (aka the Mann Act) earlier this month. The law prohibits “white slavery”, a euphemism for prostitution, and ambiguously “immorality.” It has been used to selectively prosecute interracial romance.

Johnson is guilty of transporting Belle Schneider, a white woman accused of being prostitute, from Pittsburgh to Chicago “for immoral purposes” in 1909 and 1910 (before the Mann Act was passed). Johnson was also arrested nine months ago and accused of committing the same crime with Lucille Cameron, also a white woman accused of being a prostitute, but the case “fell apart” after they married and Cameron refused to cooperate with prosecutors.

Announcing the sentence, Judge Carpenter says, “This defendant is one of the best known men of his race, and his example has been far reaching and the court is bound to consider the position he occupies among his people. In view of these facts, this is a case that calls for more than a fine.”

Johnson is free on $30,000 bond and has a two week respite while his attorney appeals to the U.S. Circuit Court.

Johnson will flee the country, meeting Lucille in Montreal in three weeks. Together they will travel to France and Johnson will live for the next seven years in Europe, South America and Mexico. He will return to the U.S. in 1920, surrendering at the Mexican border, and serving just less than a year in Leavenworth. (While in prison, he will fight a few exhibition bouts, winning them all, including one against “Topeka” Jack Johnson.)

Also in the news

The Special Parks Commission unexpectedly approves the $245,000 cost for a beach between Wilson and Montrose.

Four hundred machinists at the American Can Company in Maywood strike for increased pay and a nine-hour workday.

Yesterday’s insane laughing victim attacks an orderly in a Milwaukee hospital and is restrained with the help of “five insane patients.”

(Source: "Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1913")