Strange Times 101: Destroy All Life
Strange Times is a newsletter that explores the weirdest news of 1921, one day at a time. If you like it, forward it to a friend or back me on Patreon. And while you’re at it, why not grab yourself a copy of Westside, my 1921 mystery novel, or preorder the looming sequel, Westside Saints?
Today brings the end of the world and a runaway horse. Load up a blank cartridge for…
April 11, 1921
In order to prevent a recurrence of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, American League president Ban Johnson announces that observers will be stationed at every ballpark to watch for gamblers in the stands.
The New Jersey grand jury announces plans to investigate claims made by an assemblyman that profiteering Jersey City landlords had compelled parents to sell their daughters in order to pay rent.
After the NYPD’s renewed efforts to stamp out liquor in the city began yesterday, New York City is dryer than it has been since the start of Prohibition.
The Weather: Fair today and tomorrow; rising temperature tomorrow; diminishing winds, becoming southerly.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Or it’s one of these seven other ways
DETROIT, April 10.—The Rev. George T. Gullen, pastor of the West Grand Boulevard M. E. Church, told his congregation tonight that the world was traveling on its way to destruction at the rate of 600,000 miles a day. He also said that there were at least seven other ways in which the earth could complete the “death journey.” They were these:
The axis of the earth might shift a few degrees, with the result that the oceans would sweep over the dry land and destroy all life.
Failure of the internal fires of the earth, after which the crust of the earth would absorb all the water and air.
The heat of the sun dying out and leaving the earth a mass of ice
The earth passing through the tail of a comet, causing asphyxiation of all life.
Collision with a world wandering through space.
The slowing down or the speeding up of the rate of the earth’s rotation on its own axis. If it were slowed down the earth would fly into the sun. If it were accelerated the earth would fly into a temperature of 400 degrees below zero, and the oceans would be frozen to their utmost depths.
The closing up of all the volcanoes and other vents for gases, the inevitable result of which would be a terrific explosion which would shatter the world, or the bringing of part of the atmosphere to such a heat that the oxygen and nitrogen would unite and cause combustion of the atmosphere.
The world, Mr. Gullen says, is traveling straight toward Hercules at the rate of 600,000 miles a day, and, while the distance is immense, it is not infinite.
From the very beginning, this newsletter has loved stories about runaway horses. This is a good one, because both horses survived and nobody got hurt.
Terror-stricken at the firing of the last volley for the dead, a field artillery horse ran out of St. Raymond’s Cemetery yesterday afternoon, galloped seven and a half miles through the most crowded streets in the Bronx and fetched up at its armory without hurting any one. A mounted patrolman who pursued the animal at breakneck speed was less fortunate, having been scratched and bruised when his own mount, ridden to exhaustion, collapsed in the street.
The horse, name unknown, since those in charge at the Second Field Artillery armory were inclined to be reticent about the whole affair, had been tied to one of the gun caissons on which the three bodies of overseas victims over whom the last rites were to be performed had been borne to the cemetery. Sergeant Daly, who rode him, believed the animal was gun-broken and paid no attention to him when the blank cartridge volley sounded.
Shying and tossing his head, the horse ripped his bridle rein loose and started full tilt into Tremont Avenue. He reached Morris Avenue, turned north in White Plains Avenue, thence into Pelham Parkway, west to Fordham Road, diverted from his course now and then by the hue and cry and the dense tangle of traffic, but ever working in the direction of the armory at 166th Street and Franklin Avenue, where he landed eventually, foam-flecked, panting and trembling, but docile and unhurt by his adventure.
Patrolman Frederick Boyer of the Westchester Precinct heard the noise of the chase in which many automobiles participated, and fearing that the animal might run over some child or force two automobiles into collision, spurred his horse, Moose, in pursuit. The two animals were about evenly gaited, but the policeman’s was handicapped by the weight on his back, and while he was able to keep the fleeing beast in sight he could not gain on it. Boyer pressed Moose to even greater effort until, just at the Fordham Road and Southern Boulevard entrance to Bronx Park, the game animal, having spent its last ounce of strength in the gallant pursuit of more than three miles, went sprawling in the roadway, spilling Boyer, who slid some distance. The policeman was able to go home after an ambulance surgeon had dressed his scratches and bruises and Moose was taken in hand by the Police Department’s veterinarian.