100 Years Ago Today - April 2023

Look at these statements from headline articles in the La Porte Argus in April 1923. 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. 

 

April 2 

When wealthy Helene Ziegler, 26, learned that her suitor Frederick W. Burnham, 42 and immensely rich, was married, she went to his office, shot him to death, and killed herself. 

  

April 3 

The Ku Klux Klan organizes political machinery to work at the East St. Louis, Ill. mayoral election polls. Its captains endorse M. M. Stephens who denies knowledge of the endorsement. 

  

April 4 

Examinations for all La Porte county rural students now in the eighth grade who are eligible for promotion into high school will be held on Friday. City students are not affected. 

  

April 5 

Concrete evidence that the Ku Klux Klan has found a footing in La Porte develops with the burning of a fiery cross from the top of an oak tree on Truesdell last night. 

  

April 6 

Sally Gold, age 108, clerks in her son’s candy and notion store in Brooklyn, N. Y. She is spry and able to read without glasses. 

  

April 7 

The rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal church is voted a substantial salary increase made possible by an increase in the amount of parishioners’ pledges and $100 from the Woman’s Guild. 

  

April 9 

The central figure in the “lipstick” case in Arkansas loses her legal fight for the right to use face powder and other cosmetics in a high school. 

  

April 10 

Pretty 18-year-old Mathilde McCormick, who came of age on Saturday and is the granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller, returns to Switzerland to marry her middle-aged suitor Major Max Oser. 

  

April 11 

“Divine Sarah” Bernhardt lives just a few days after her last picture was made. 

  

April 12 

Surveys reveal that 520 of 691 college women practiced birth control and that at least 375 admitted they had spooned, kissed and caressed men before marriage. 

  

April 13 

The next congress will cost the people of the United States about $7.5 billion. 

  

April 14 

The Advance-Rumely Co. will provide a moving picture that tells the story “From Ore to National Pipe” followed by a lecture and community singing for its employees at Wolf hall. 

  

April 16 

La Porte Salvation Army lassies win fifth place in the competitive drill at the young people’s congress in Chicago. About two score of cities were represented in the contest. 

  

April 17 

The acting Illinois prohibition director finds bootleggers are making what he terms poisonous “needle beer” with ether and that Chicago is flooded with it. Deaths are possible. 

  

April 18 

Nearly seventy thousand baseball fans, the greatest number of rooters in the National game, jam Yankee stadium for the opening game between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. 

  

April 19 

Heavily armed armadas of rum runners are sailing frequently from British ports, carrying whiskey to the United States in defiance of the American law. 

  

April 20 

The cantata “Pan of Summer’s Day” will be presented at the Central theatre by the High School Girls’ Glee club. Admission is 25 and 50 cents. Proceeds will go towards a grand piano. 

  

April 21 

The Y. M. C. A. Boys’ band will give its first public appearance in the Phoenix theater. Uniforms for the boys will be ordered. The 50 cent admission fee will be used for paying for the suits. 

  

April 23 

“The Mysterious Lady Raffles” will invade La Porte’s business district on Wednesday. A $50 reward will be given to the man, woman or child who successfully identifies her. 

  

April 24 

The La Porte business girls will have a Merry Minstrel Maids street parade, riding in automobiles in costume either gorgeous or grotesque and faces as black as the ace of spades. 

  

April 25 

A baby seemingly born dead at a New Jersey hospital is revived by four injections of adrenalin into the heart muscles after every other known method had failed. 

  

April 26 

“The Mysterious Lady Raffles” strolled the stores up and down La Porte streets without being accosted by the hundreds of persons searching for her. She returned to Chicago last night. 

  

April 27 

Chauncey Depew, America’s youngest old man, celebrates his 89th birthday by working at his desk as chairman of the board of directors of the New York Central railroad in New York City. 

  

April 28 

As the result of threats made against Pope Pius XI in Moscow by Russian communists, the greatest precautions will be taken at the beatification ceremonies in St. Peter’s cathedral. 

  

April 30 

Secretary of Commerce Hoover breaks ground for a model “better home” near the white house and next to Sherman’s statue to be used in the better homes in America campaign.