Centenaries - whole and half

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1913 August 11 - The beaten and slashed remains of Salvatrice Giordano are dumped in a New York City park. She was unidentified until her husband, Gregorio Giordano, reported her missing and identified the body. Police searched their Manhattan flat and discovered bloody clothing. Mr. Giordano was then arrested, convicted of murder and went to the electric chair in the following year.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1963 August 15 - The stabbed and beaten body of William Garfield Rowe, 64, is found on the floor of his English farmhouse. Two local outlaws named Dennis Whitty and Russell Pascoe were convicted and hanged for the murder in December.

50 years ago -1963 August 15 - Henry John Burnett is hanged in a prison at Aberdeen for murder. Burnett had shot Thomas Guyan, the husband of a woman with whom he was having an affair, in the face with a shotgun. Margaret had been separated from her spouse and Burnett became outraged when she informed him of her intent to return to her husband. Burnett was the last person to be legally executed in Scotland.

[sdreid]

150 years ago - 1863 August 21 - William Quantrill's Raiders, a detachment of de facto Confederate guerrilla fighters, attack Lawrence, Kansas. The town was long known as a stronghold for abolitionists. Nearly 200 male citizens of all ages were killed by the raiders. In 1865, Quantrill was shot by Union ambushers and died from his wounds a few weeks later.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1963 August 26 - In a Lodi, New Jersey drinking establishment, two policeman named Peter Voto and Gary Tedesco are murdered when they answer a disturbance call. The shooters were Thomas Trantino and Frank Falco. Two days later, Falco was killed in a shootout with New York police. Trantino then turned himself in, was convicted of the killings and sentenced to die in the electric chair even though he was only 15-years-old at the time. His sentence was later commuted to a term of life in prison. In 2002, he was released from incarceration and today, at age 65, he is living as a free man.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1963 August 26 - In a Lodi, New Jersey drinking establishment, two policeman named Peter Voto and Gary Tedesco are murdered when they answer a disturbance call. The shooters were Thomas Trantino and Frank Falco. Two days later, Falco was killed in a shootout with New York police. Trantino then turned himself in, was convicted of the killings and sentenced to die in the electric chair. His sentence was later commuted to a term of life in prison. In 2002, he was released from incarceration and today, at age 75, he is living as a free man.

This to correct the previous post which contained some inaccuracies - sorry.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1963 August 28 - In what became known as the Career Girls Murders, the frantically stabbed bodies of Newsweek researcher Janice Wylie, 21, and school teacher Emily Hoffert, 23, are found in their New York City apartment by a third roommate and Janice's father, writer Max Wylie. After some false starts, a drug addicted burglar named Richard Robles, who was 22 when the murders occurred, was turned in by an acquaintance, convicted of the killings and sent to prison for a life term. Until 1986, he maintained his innocence but Robles then admitted his guilt. He is still in Attica prison at the age of 72. The case is supposedly the basis for the TV movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders which later led to the Kojak detective series.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1913 September 2 - Father Hans Schmidt slashes the throat of Anna Aumuller, his girlfriend, when he discovers that she's pregnant. The priest then dismembers the body of the murdered woman and tosses the pieces into New York's East River. Schmidt was eventually convicted and went to the electric chair in 1916. To date, he is the only Roman Catholic priest to be executed in the United States. Although another man was convicted of the crime, some also suspect Father Schmidt of killing a 9-year-old girl who vanished in Kentucky when the priest was serving there. The girl's defiled corpse was found buried in the basement of the clergyman's church.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1913 September 4 - A German school teacher named Ernst Wagner beats and stabs his wife Anna to death. He then proceeds to murder his two daughters and two sons with a knife. The killer then gathers up three handguns with 500 rounds of ammunition and rides off on his bicycle to continue his murder spree in a nearby town. Mr. Wagner shot many people there, killing 9 more before he was set upon by three locals when his guns were emptied and he seemed to make no move to reload. His total of 14 murder victims spanned an age range of 5 to 68. Wagner was determined to be not guilty by reason of insanity sent to a secure asylum where he died from tuberculosis in 1938.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1963 September 15 - In Birmingham, Alabama, the 16th Street Baptist Church is bombed killing Addie Collins, 14, Denise McNair, 11, Carole Robertson, 14, and Cynthia Wesley, 14. There were 22 others injured by the blast. Four KKK members named Robert Chambliss, Bobby Cherry, Herman Cash and Thomas Blanton were suspects in the crime. Justice was delayed and Cash had died before the case came to its conclusion. The other three men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison where both Cherry and Chambliss died. Thomas Blanton, 83, still survives in the St. Clair Correctional Facility.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1913 September 22 - Murderer Ernest Austin is hanged for the slaying of Ivy Mitchell, 11. He'd cut the girl's throat after raping her. Austin is the last person to be executed in Queensland.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1913 September 26 - In Wheaton, Illinois, Mildred Allison Rexroat is shot and killed then left on some railroad tracks. Henry Spencer, her partner, was charged with her murder, convicted and sentenced to hang. He confessed to many more murders although none of them were proven against him and he was executed 1914.

50 years ago - 1963 September 26 - Eric Frey is hit over the head, pushed into a well then blown up by a bomb chucked in by his business partner Dr. Glennon Engleman. The St. Louis dentist was a co-owner with Frey of the Pacific Drag Strip in Missouri. Engleman killed seven people for profit or convenience between 1958 and 1980. After the 1980 murder, the perpetrator was finally brought to justice. Engleman was given lengthy prison terms and died in 1999 while still incarcerated.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1913 September 29 - The inventor of the compression ignition engine, Rudolf Diesel vanishes while traveling by steamer from Antwerp to London. After a period of time, a body with affects that belonged to Diesel was reportedly found floating in the North Sea near Norway. The ship that claimed to recover the remains said that they returned to corpse to the water because the body was too decomposed. To this day, it is unknown if Diesel was murdered, committed suicide or disappeared from some other cause.

[Mayerling]

100 years ago - 1913 September 29 - The inventor of the compression ignition engine, Rudolf Diesel vanishes while traveling by steamer from Antwerp to London. After a period of time, a body with affects that belonged to Diesel was reportedly found floating in the North Sea near Norway. The ship that claimed to recover the remains said that they returned to corpse to the water because the body was too decomposed. To this day, it is unknown if Diesel was murdered, committed suicide or disappeared from some other cause.

Hi Stan,

The theory as to suicide is based on Diesel being heavily in debt due to the developing and marketing of his revolutionary engine. He was traveling to London to possibly interest the British Admiralty in using Diesel Engines on their warships (as the German Navy was starting to do). If he was murdered the leading suspect is the Wilhelmine govenment's agents, killing Diesel to prevent the sale of rights to such a valuable invention to their rival (soon to be enemy) state.

Jeff

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Jeff

In reality, in the Dreadnought stakes, by 1913 they were inevitably already seeing each other as something much more than rivals, and if not as outright enemies, only just a little less...

The easy acceptance of the "Riddle in the Sands" surely demonstrates that this was something of a state of mind with the ruling classes (I was going to say a fait accompli, but that is as much a misnomer) for at least ten years before Diesel's death...

All the best

Dave

[Mayerling]

Hi Dave,

It was clear as early as 1896 or so (when Wilhelm sent Kruegar a public message of support in response to the Jameson Raid) that Germany was replacing France and Russia as the power to be wary of. France and Britain would briefly clash at Fashoda in 1898, and Russian and British interests in India and China would be clashing in Tibet around the same time, but Britain began a careful search for allies in this period. She would be courting the United States after 1898 (our war with Spain drew as much international criticism as Britain's Boer War did), and with Japan (who signed a Naval Agreement with Britain in 1902). Actually Joseph Chamberlain tried to get an Anglo-German Alliance in 1899 and 1901, but the Wilhelmine Empire demanded too much (colonial territory) as it's price. In 1904 France and Britain put aside African rivalries with the Entente Cordial, and France got Russia and Britain together in 1907 with the Triple Entente. But it was still difficult - Russia and Britain almost came to war in 1904 over the "Dogger Bank incident" durring the Russo - Japanese War, and in 1907 Russia had almost gotten an alliance with Germany when Nicholas II and Wilhelm signed a treaty off Bjorko, Finland. It was hard to convince Nicholas that he could not sign the treaty without damaging his alliance with France. Russia and Austria-Hungary worked in collaboration in 1909 when their foreign ministers tried to tie together the dual monarchy absorbing Bosnia-Hertzagovina into the Hapsburg Empire, and Russia tried to grab the Dardanelles Straits from the Ottoman Empire. Austria got away with it, but not Russia. However, in 1913 Britain and Germany did agree to a naval moratorium to ease tensions - in the wake of the Balkan Wars and the second Moroccan Crisis. No further naval construction was to be allowed for a year. It ended when the war broke out.