1903: Prisoners Play Cards to Spank Each Other

“Prisoners confined in jail with nothing to occupy their efforts usually find some way of killing time. The ingenuity shown is often remarkable. To some these means may savor of the childhood, make-believe play, but that charge does not bother the adults who may be guilty of it.  In the county jail the other day a reporter saw an instance. The game was at cards, Seven-up. There were no chips to pass for forfeits--and here the inventive genius came in. Two men had sat vis-a-vis on their cell hammock for hours and until the tally list of games won reached several times across a slip of paper. At the close of one game the winner reached behind him and pulled out a paddle or spanker. ‘Here, take your medicine,’ he called to his opponent, whereupon the latter presented the seat of his trousers for a bastinado of the number of strokes equal to the margin of points by which he had lost the game.  ‘Nosy poker’ is similar. In this case the beaten man presents his nose for receiving strikes from the deck of cards. ‘Those two fellows sometimes have noses so red that they look like electric light bulbs,’ commented the jailer.” 

~The Spokane press. (Spokane, Wash.), 13 July 1903. Chronicling America. Lib. of Congress. 

1907: Here’s the Man Who Thinks He Can Shoot Your Soul With a Camera

“New York, July 13--Recently a stir was caused by the claim of Boston scientists that by weighing the bodies of persons before and after death they had been able to determine the weight of the soul. Now comes Henry Price, a retired professor, who not only tells what the soul looks like and where it is located, but offers to photograph it as it leaves the body. He has asked the Bellevue hospital authorities for permission to install cameras at a few deathbeds in order to make such pictures. A number of subjects would have to be exposed to the camera, because, you see, some people have no souls. 

‘You only have a soul,’ says Professor Price, ‘if you have merited 1 from the Deity. If you have transgressed His law, if you are steeped in sin, you have no soul. You die like a dumb animal and crumbling dust is the end of you. ‘What is a soul like? Why, it is small, shapeless and gelatinous, and is located beneath the first rib. At the moment of death the soul is removed by an angel or agent of Deity. It must be taken while warm and palpitating and transferred to a body the counterpart of the 1 it has left. There is no such thing as eternity. The soul expires after its second life. ‘A camera sees and records things not visible to the eye. That is why I am seeking an opportunity to take photographs and thus demonstrate this discovery that has come after almost a lifetime of study.’

The professor thinks a soul does not weigh more than a gram.” ~The Spokane press. (Spokane, Wash.), 13 July 1907. Chronicling America. Lib. of Congress. 

1903: The Helpful Vacation

“The timely question of vacation was enlivened the other day in the ‘Hundred year club’ of New York. Its annual banquet was devoted to the discussion. The man who presided over the banquet was 94 years old, and responses to toasts were made by several who ‘had not tasted tea, coffee or medicine for 50 years.’ The views of such men upon ‘vacation’ as a restorative and means of prolonging life are necessarily of high practical value. The man who has lived to be almost 100 may not be supremely wise in all things, but it must be admitted on all sides that he has ‘staying power.’  Perhaps the most instructive address was by a member who had made a close study of the art of living in this country and in Europe and who declares that Americans try to crowd into one day that to which Europeans would devote two or three days. This habit applies to vacations as well as to work. The European not only takes more vacations than the American, but he leaves all care and thought of work behind him; vacation with him is not a frantic effort to see how much he can see or do in given time; he selects a favored spot, arranges for his special needs, and stays there, resting, happy and contented. He is a stranger to the American habit of flitting from place to place. To him vacation is a different matter from traveling to see the sights.  There is much in this that merits serious consideration by Americans, who are prone to make a hurried, strenuous, nerve-racking affair of a vacation. We have not acquired the fine art of intelligent loafing.  Another venerable speaker advocated tent life as the solution of the problem. He has been ‘a dweller in tents for 50 years’ and claimed that tent dwelling greatly adds to the probability of living a century.  Of course these venerable gentlemen discuss the question only from the standpoint of longevity. It is by no means certain that everybody cares to live 100 years. But it is certain that every sane man desires to live in good health and with fullest strength as long as he does live, and there is no better means of doing this than by sensible vacations interspersed with periods of hard labor.  But any fixed rules for vacation is impossible. The vacation that is most helpful is determined largely by each individual’s employment, temperament, physical condition and the climate and character of the place in which he lives and toils.  It is well worth any man’s while to give serious thought to this subject. It is one of the most important with which he ever has to deal.” 

~The Spokane press. (Spokane, Wash.), 13 July 1903. Chronicling America. Lib. of Congress. 

1908: How Women Fight a Duel

"PARIS, July 13.--Two Parisian women, Mlle. de Namias and Mlle Andree Alaza, fought a sword duel in a private park in Paris, over a young man, who has discreetly kept in the background, and whose name does not appear in the case. The duel was carried out in the regulation French fashion. Each combatant had seconds and a doctor was in attendance to stop the fight after honor had been satisfied by the flow of blood.  The women fought with skirts and bodices on, otherwise being unprotected. They went at it ferociously for five rounds. Then Mlle. Namias got in a slight thrust just above her opponent’s waist line. It was only a scratch, but Mlle. Alaza fainted at the sight of her blood, and her doctor forbade further fighting, saying another shock would endanger Mlle. Alaza’s life. Unlike men duelists, the women refused to make up their at the end of the combat, and went away as bitter enemies as before.”  ~From The Spokane press. (Spokane, Wash.), 13 July 1908. Chronicling America. Lib. of Congress. 

1916: Cat Is Messenger of Death!

~The day book. (Chicago, Ill.), 13 July 1916. Chronicling America. Lib. of Congress.