Founded in 2017, Strange Times is a twice-monthly newsletter that explores the weirdest news of 1921, one day at a time. To get free games and the original PDFs of every article that runs in Strange Times—plus stories that didn’t make the cut—back me on Patreon.

Three Things I Like

The world remains an unstoppable hurricane of bullshit. Here are three things that are helping to keep me moderately sane:

1. Soap! One of the folks on the Deadball discord shared a link to their spouse’s new soap store on Etsy. I bought two—Shea butter and rose clay and mango butter—and they are absolutely lovely. Like all fancy soaps the only drawback is that they look and smell like some kind of delicious baked good but so far I have been able to avoid taking a bite.

2. A Taste For Death! There’s a typewriter repair place in Philly that sells dollar paperbacks out front; last year I traded them a $10 bill for ten P.D. James mysteries. They’re dense and light at the same time, like a really good chocolate cake, and they make me want to get better at writing third person fiction. Right now I’m reading A Taste For Death, which is exactly as excellent as all the others.

3. Old Postcards! I bought a pound of vintage postcards on eBay for $10—yes, they’re literally sold by the pound—and I’m writing goofy quotes on them to send to my friends. Most were blank but some have messages, including this spectacularly dull dispatch about the price of gas:

Today we have twin stories about driverless vehicles. Watch the skies for a balloon cavorting mysteriously on…

August 6, 1921

August 6, 1921

• Describing herself as a “superwoman,” a West Palm Beach postmistress accused of embezzling $32,000 passes her time in jail writing poetry in the dark. Subscribe to my Patreon for a PDF of this article, which includes some of her (honestly not terrible) poetry!

• In response to a threatened wage cut of 20%, the musicians in 100 cinema and vaudeville theaters strike.

• A Tennessee senator introduces a bill proposing to give war hero Alvin York a Captain’s pension, as the legendary marksman is said to be struggling financially.

• The Weather: Increasing cloudiness, followed by showers this afternoon or tonight; Sunday, showers.

Today’s front page featured some of the best headlines I’ve seen in a while, including “Spurned Woman Fires Five Bullets Into Lawyer’s Body” and “Dr. Percy S. Grant to Wed Mrs. Lydig; May Keep Baby Waif,” but none of them compared to this, which may be the finest headline in the history of this newsletter. The story itself does not disappoint—you can tell they had some fun with this one. And New Yorkers may enjoy knowing that the Rockaway Park Air Station is now the site of Jacob Riis Park.

The H-1, the Navy Air Service smallest blimp, went on a rampage yesterday afternoon from the air station at Rockaway Park, L.I., catapulted the pilot and crew of two into a Barren Island swamp when they attempted to bring it to earth, and, after drifting at a height of 5,000 feet for more than three hours, ended an unpiloted journey of fifty miles by landing gracefully on a farm near Scarsdale, N.Y.

Lieutenant Charles Bauch, test pilot; Machinist E.A. Sullivan and Chief Aviation Rigger D.A. Kenny floundered in the mud, bruised and cut by their precipitate fall, and were later taken to the Air Station hospital, where it was said that their injuries were not serious.

Lieutenant M.S. Eddy in an airplane and enlisted men in motor trucks pursued the unruly blimp to its landing place. A good part of the population of Scarsdale, attracted by the sight of the balloon cavorting mysteriously over their city, raced after it as they saw it suddenly begin a graceful descent. After narrowly missing a church steeple and a couple of flagpoles in its descent, the H-1 finally settled down to earth without a jar. As the runaway touched the field a score of men made her fast with ropes to a tree and waited the arrival of the navy rescuers.

Dismantle Unruly Craft

Aviation mechanics diligently set to work on the task of dismantling the blimp, and by dark it was loaded on trucks and started on its way to Rockaway.

The h-1 began her trip shortly after 2 o’clock in the afternoon, when Lieutenant Bauch and his men went up in a test flight. The balloon, known as a towing blimp and of the type used for observation purposes, generally from a battleship, is equipped with a motor to propel it and yesterday it was decided to try the machine out. The balloon had hardly been in the air more than fifteen minutes when the engine began missing and suddenly went “dead.”

Shouting to enlisted men at the Air Station, Lieutenant Bauch guided the blimp toward the earth, but it was too high for the men below to seize the guy ropes. The balloon, mounted and carried along by the brisk breeze, headed for Barren Island. Releasing some of the gas, Lieutenant Bauch nosed the blimp toward a swamp on Barren Island. The basket of the balloon struck the earth with a thud and the three occupants were thrown violently out. Six or seven persons tried to hold the guy ropes, but the strong breeze carried the balloon away from them.

Then the blimp, mounting to a height of a mile, drifted toward the city, passing over the central section of Brooklyn and proceeding northward to Westchester. Officers at the Air Station praised the skill of Lieutenant Bauch for the manner in which he attempted to land the blimp on Barren Island. Had he opened what is termed the large valve, the H-1 would have descended to earth like a parachute and probably would have been wrecked, they said.

Seaplane Pursues Blimp

In the meantime officers at Rockaway Point quickly arranged to pursue the runaway. Lieutenant Eddy in a seaplane followed, picking up the blimp over Brooklyn. The seaplane remained close to the balloon until near Mount Vernon, New York, where Lieutenant Eddy made a landing and telephoned back to the Air Station. Two large auto trucks sped through the city toward Mount Vernon on the lead given by the aviator.

After passing over Mount Vernon the blimp was seen mounting higher and higher. It is equipped with an automatic safety valve which opens when 8,000 feet is reached, permitting the gas slowly to escape and causing the balloon to descend. Lieutenant Eddy noticed the H-1 suddenly begin to drop to lower altitudes and he figured that it would require a half hour at least for it to reach the earth.

The motor trucks had been able to keep up with the progress of the runaway, and when it finally touched earth they were less than five miles away. Over Scarsdale the H-1 began to descend quite rapidly and residents began to be apprehensive that it would land on some of their houses. And indeed there was ground for their fears, as the blimp narrowly skirted a church steeple and two flag poles on its downward flight.

Fast losing its gas supply, the balloon, looking rather penitent, made a sudden drop toward the Crane farm, where residents captured the unruly aircraft. Air officers who examined the blimp said that it was intact and ready to be used again.

The testing of the H-1 and the D-6, another balloon, marks the closing activities of the Rockaway Park Naval Air Station, which passes out of existence on September 1, unless steps are taken to make it permanent. The land then reverts to the city, which has been deaf to appeals from the Navy that the municipality present the field to the Naval Air Station.

From renegade blimps to renegade automobiles! It seems that driverless cars have been just a few years away since 1921. They were a lousy idea then and they’re a lousy idea now, no matter what Captain R.E. Vaugn tells you. And yet 100 years later, we still think that the best way to test these contraptions is to let them loose in a busy downtown.

DAYTON, Ohio, Aug. 5.—Hundreds of people hurrying to work this morning stopped in amazement as they saw an oddly-shaped driverless car about eight feet long wend its way through the business section. What they saw was the first radio-controlled car ever invented.

The experiment, conducted by Captain R.E. Vaughn of McCook Field, the army inventor, was the first attempt to test the car under the strain of traffic.

The car was guided through the traffic by a radio apparatus, attached to an automobile, following fifty feet behind it and operated by Vaughn. The car never failed once. As it approached street intersections, traffic signals were observed, and the horn was blown if some pedestrian or other obstacle got in its path.