1924

When I was about eight, I went to the Museum of the Fantastic in eastern Oregon. One of the things in it was a "death ray" that someone tried to sell to the US government. I pushed the button and it blew warm air on you.

Years later, I was at the library looking through microfilm of the New York Times. I was reading about the Leopold and Loeb case in 1924. The library didn't have Chicago papers. But as I sat there I started reading other news.

"Hey! It's that death ray I saw!" I thought.

It was front page news for several days. A Frenchman was on a ship heading for the US. He had a death ray he wanted to sell. His own government had turned it down. The news fizzled quickly when he got here.

In other news, a man in Japan dressed in a business suit with no shoes scaled the wall of the US embassy and committed ritual suicide with a sword to protest anti-Japanese US immigration laws. Mussolini kidnapped a socialist leader.

Some children took a car on a joy ride and ran over a cop's foot.

A cop was arrested for manslaughter. He said he fired into the air to chase some young children out of an abandoned building. A seven year old boy was struck by a bullet and killed. That kid would have been 95-years-old now.

Some other children, inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case, kidnapped another kid. They beat him, knocked out one of his teeth and broke his arm. They tied him up. They sent one kid to demand a five dollar ransom from his mother, but the kid apparently chickened out and went home. When he didn't return, the other kids went home leaving the victim tied up in the woods. He got free and went home. They're in their late 90s if any are still alive.

Back then, you had to have your parents' permission to enlist in the military if you were under 22. There was talk about changing that policy.

Some workers played a practical joke on a new employee. They told him that a lonely housewife lived in the house over there. Her husband was working far away and if he were to go to her door that night... He did. And his co-workers burst out shouting as if they were the woman's angry husband and fired blanks at him. But one of the guns wasn't loaded with blanks and the young man was killed.

Several girls in a group home were killed in a fire. One of the residents burned it down so the girls wouldn't have to live there and could return home.

Help wanted ads were very specific back then. One company looking for a kid to work in their office wanted a "Negro boy from a good family who wants to learn the plumbing business." They had separate ads for male and female.

There was lots more.

Why am I writing about it here?