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.

Things I Like

1. Alice Bell! As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I’m a big fan of video games journo Alice Bell’s podcast and I adore her mystery fiction as well. I’m currently reading Displeasure Island, the sequel to her debut Grave Expectations, both of which follow the exploits of a medium named Claire who talks to ghosts and solves mysteries despite being an absolute mess of a human being. They’re sharp and funny and just really really good, y’all. Read them.

2. Iced tea! It’s too darn hot on the east coast of the United States and probably in other places too. If you, like me, are the kind of person who likes to start the day with a pot of strong black tea, I strongly advise you to pour that tannic brew into a mason jar that’s also got a fistful of mint and a squeezed out lemon wedge in it. Pop it in the fridge for a few hours and bam, you’ve got unsweetened ice tea that actually tastes like something.

3. Children’s newspapers! Last week my 9-year-old announced he wanted to make “a newspaper about all the stuff that happened this week.” I leapt to help him and we quickly found a groove with him acting as a reporter, telling me all about the five stories he’d planned for the first issue, while I performed the time-honored work of the rewrite man, shaping his breathless narration into a handful of quick and dirty news items, four of which were about what was happening in his brother’s Pokémon game. Afterwards, he edited the hell out of my copy, stripping out any words he thought his little bro wouldn’t know, and delivering the deathless note: “If a word has a synonym that people are more likely to know, we should use that synonym.” I laid it out in InDesign, little bro caught several grievous errors when he did his proofread, and we were done! We’ve been handing it out to friends and family and they’re both extremely proud of it (as am I). Even if you have no journalism experience, you can do this too! Just have your kid tell your stories, write them down and print them up. It’s a hell of a lot more fun than real work.

Today brings four strange stories of women swallowing hatpins, mice pilfering diamonds, a woman being paid to avoid her husband and a woman using the law to make men avoid her. Avoid the masher scalper on…

August 14, 1921

• A Spanish inventor announces the successful tests of an anti-collision device for automobiles, which he says can apply the car’s brakes automatically when a collision is imminent.

• Three heavily armed robbers hold up the company payroll in the mining town of Kincaid, Illinois, escaping with $114,000.

• The Weather: Showers and probably thunderstorms today; fair and cooler tomorrow.

For those just joining us, “masher” is 1920s slang for catcalling, which was serious enough that it could land you in the workhouse.

That Mrs. Eleanor De Hart, independent in means and otherwise, and living at 949 Amsterdam Avenue, is the deadly foe of mashers, was the opinion expressed by magistrate Silberman in Night Court last night when Mrs. Hart was complainant against Joseph Zanarelli of 415 West Thirty-first Street, who said he was a foreman in a branch Post Office.

Mrs. De Hart said that she was walking through Central Park yesterday, near 106th Street and Central Park West, when Zanarelli tried to win her affection. The man followed her, she said, until Policeman Lawlor of the Arsenal Station arrested him on a charge of disorderly conduct. He pleaded guilty in court and was sentenced to one day in the Workhouse. His sentence was lightened by his war record.

Magistrate Silberman said he thought he had seen Mrs. De Hart in court as complainant in similar cases and she admitted that she had arraigned eight other flirters in recent years and obtained a conviction in each case. The Magistrate complimented her.

A classic example of a story that raises more questions than it answers. Questions such as: How the heck do you swallow a seven inch hatpin? What were you doing with it in the moment before your son fell off his chair? Dangling it down your throat? Using it to clean your teeth? We’ll never know, but at least Mrs. Ella Levy survived the ordeal.

CHICAGO, Aug. 13.—Three months ago Mrs. Ella Levy swallowed a seven-inch hatpin when she became excited as her small son fell off a chair. She told her husband, but he was skeptical. Yesterday she went to a doctor and the pin, which had punctured the stomach walls in three places, was removed. Today she is on the road to recovery. “She should have been dead in 24 hours,” Dr. Carl Meyer said, and Dr. H.O. Wiseman characterized the woman’s recovery as a “miracle.”

Even in 1921, if I’m a 20-year-old who just got married I’d want more than $25 a week to not have sex. That’s $1300, which would be around $23,000 today—it’s just not worth it! Of course it’s possible I’m wrong to think she was being paid off to stop young Robert Gorden from fornicating. Maybe it was literally about not bothering the poor student. Maybe his bride was just really, really annoying.

Mrs. Sydney Gordon, 20 years old, of 23 East Seventeenth Street, Brooklyn, filed her consent yesterday in the Supreme Court not to disturb her youthful husband, Robert Gordon Jr., until he finishes college in 1923. As an inducement the young man’s father promised the Court to pay her $1,500 immediately and to give her $25 a week for the next two years, or until young Gordon graduates. Of the $1,500 Mrs. Gordon’s attorney, F. Wright Moxley, will receive half as a fee.

The young couple were married Jan. 3rd last. The elder Gordon wished to have his son finish his education and induced the boy to leave his bride for the time and return to school. The cash payment and weekly allowance agreement is in settlement of a suit of alienation of affections Mrs. Gordon brought against her father-in-law.

First of all, I’d like every story about a young man who witnessed something interesting to include a detail about whether or not he managed not to faint. Secondly, what do you think is more likely: that this mouse was carrying a diamond earring around and dropped it when she threw the phone book at it or that the diamond earring was already on the floor and she only found it because she threw a phone book at a mouse? Either way, great job Genevieve!

A tale that will interest Curator Ditmars of the Bronx Zoo was narrated yesterday by Miss Genevieve Allen, head of the Abandonment Bureau at the District Attorney’s office. She told of having battled in her office with a mouse that had “a diamond in its tail.” Miss Allen was alone when the “monster” was seen, but she did not faint; instead, she hurled a telephone book at the intruder. Great was her relief when the mouse fled, but greater her joy at finding that the impish little thing had “discarded” a diamond it must have “worn,” she said.

The gem was a diamond ear-ring in a gold setting. The stone, it was estimated, weighed half a carat. To verify her tale, Miss Allen turned over the gem to Acting District Attorney Banton. He put it into a safe to await a claimant. Miss Allen said a woman client reported such a loss several days ago. How the mouse could have picked up the circlet of gold is a new kind of mystery the personnel of the District Attorney’s office is trying to unravel.