100 Years Ago Today - August 2021

Look at these statements from headline articles in the La Porte Argus in August 1921. Terminology, capitalization, and what makes headline news can be different. Yet accidents, business, crime, and war still make headlines. Want to read the whole article? It’s on microfilm in the Indiana Room at the Main Library. Staff will be glad to help you access it. 

 

August 2-7 

Enrico Caruso, the world’s greatest tenor, dies this morning. He never completely recovered from an operation for pleurisy last winter. 
 

Flames are sweeping famine and plague ridden districts in Siberia. 
 

Conductors and motormen who were on the last of the Des Moines trolleys that went to the barns early today refuse to pay tribute to the buses that threw them out of jobs. They walk home. 
 

Kingsford Heights Fire Chief wants a tougher punishment for a man who allegedly took more than $86,000 from his department. 
 

A tramp alights from a train near South Bend, seizes an eleven year old girl picking blueberries, binds and gags her and shreds her clothing. She is found four hours later. 
 

“Spuds” are likely to cease being the foundation for most meals if they soar much higher in prices since the dry weather indicated a very light potato crop. 

 

Walter Bunton, a 27-year-old La Porte resident, gets a million dollars and royalties for his patent for tempering copper. 

  

August 9-14 

The most complete still equipment haul was taken from a farm near Springville early this morning. Three stills, barrels, oil stoves, moonshine, etc. were destroyed or confiscated. 
 

Babe Ruth makes his 42nd home run of the season in the third inning of the White Sox-Yankee game in New York. There was one man on base. 
 

A La Porte detective sergeant finds 15 hobos in box cars formerly used as houses by Mexican construction gangs. He gives them an hour to shake the cinders of the yards off their feet. 
 

President Harding’s father, age 76, marries his office helper, age 52, suddenly. 
 

Eighteen men bring a man to woods north of New Carlisle, strip him, apply tar and feathers, and warn him to treat his wife decently in the future. 
 

Burglars get the cash register contents at a shine parlor and hat cleaner on Michigan avenue. It is the fourth similar incident in as many weeks. 

  

August 16-21 

A man in Texas accused of assaulting a seven-year-old girl was hanged by a mob. Then the mob took his body from an undertaking establishment and burned it. 
 

Prosecutor Earl Rowley and Constable W. C. Anderson go on another of their “parties.” They seize a rude still, two quarts of villainous “white mule” and copper coils near Kingsbury. 
 

Under ideal weather conditions, practically 5,000 farmers and their families gather at Fox Park for the second annual Farm Bureau picnic. 
 

Lloyd George in the house of commons and Marquis Curson in the house of lords tell the British parliament that the government has gone the limit in its offers to Ireland. 
 

Residents along Rose and Adams streets, which have just been paved with asphalt, are indignant over actions of some motorists who use the streets as a speedway. 
 

Tag Day activities of the Charity circle mean you should take the padlock off your pocketbook and let a pretty young lady tie a bit of pasteboard to you as evidence of your contribution. 

  

August 23-31 

Farmers flood livestock and grain markets of the country with heavy shipments, despite warnings from commission dealers of demoralized markets. 
 

America’s giant dirigible carrying more than fifty American and British flyers explodes and falls into the River Humber. Forty-five lose their lives. 
 

The sixty-ninth annual exhibition of the La Porte County Agricultural Association, better known as the La Porte Fair, will swing into being next Tuesday. 

 

Mathias Erzberger, one of the most powerful politicians in Germany, has been assassinated in Baden where he was spending a vacation with his family. 
 

About 3,000 memorial trees in honor of those who served in the recent war will be planted along the 30 miles of the Lincoln highway in this county. 
 

Famine and diseases are killing thousands every day in the Volga. 
 

Toadstools eaten by mistake for mushrooms in Michigan City on Sunday night and yesterday have killed one. Two are dying and there are 10 others for whom doctors hold out no hope. 
 

Lockjaw causes the death of a five-year-old boy. He had lost a finger while trying to extract an obstacle from a lawn mower propelled by his brother.