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.

To Kill a Cook

The big news this week for To Kill a Cook is that after three months of very heavy rewriting, I was finally able to send a draft of the sequel, tentatively titled Dead as Dirt, to my editor. You ever finish a project so big that it takes you a few days to realize that you’re actually (for the moment, anyway) done? I’ve been celebrating with a lot of naps. If you’d like to honor my achievement, take a nap yourself—oh, and preorder To Kill a Cook now!

Things I Like

1. The Way Things Work! My seven-year-old and I have been working our way through the classic 1988 kids’ guide to engineering and physics and it’s been amazing how well it holds up. If you want your child to start pointing out third class levers, this is the book for you.

2. Eremita! Rather a niche suggestion, but if you’re looking for coffee and a pastry in northwest Philadelphia, my friend Colleen’s coffee shop Eremita, on Ridge Ave right by C&C Creamery and Stanley’s Hardware, is a lovely place to hang. It’s only been around for a couple of years but it’s so homey in there that it’s become an institution. Check it out.

3. TV5Monde! Another free language learning app, TV5Monde shows you short clips on the news, culture, and history and then quizzes you about it in French. Good for comprehension and a fun way to learn random vocab! C’est bon!

Today we’ve got bearded French women, a mishap on the Coney Island coast, and a suspected theft of 210 jars of jam. Leave women alone, dammit, on…

August 22, 1921

• A dozen or more “rowdies” cause a panic on the Staten Island Rapid Transit Railroad by shoving each other, jostling other passengers and overpowering the train crew.

• The Convocation of Sioux Indians, a tribal organization sponsored by the Episcopal Church, announces its opposition to the revival of “Indian customs,” including the performing of traditional native dances.

• Although the ZR-2 dirigible that it was designed to hold has been held up by bad weather, Lakehurst, NJ, locals celebrate the completion of their massive aerodrome by staging a boxing match inside the hangar.

• The Weather: Fair today; Tuesday, fair and slightly warmer; gentle to moderate northeast and east winds.

This jaw dropping, highly scientific piece of news—revealed in two paragraphs on page two of the paper—was the reason that cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption stopped after 1921.

PARIS, Aug. 21.—Beards and mustaches are increasing alarmingly among women annually, the doctors blaming cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking principally. Statistics of the hospitals show 11 per cent. of the female inmates have an abnormal growth of hair on their upper lips and chins, and that 27 per cent. of the women inmates in the insane asylums are bearded and have mustaches.

Paris society, which has taken up intensive cigarette smoking since the armistice, when Turkish scented tobacco became available once more, and contracted the American cocktail habit from the American Expeditionary Forces, are aghast at the statement of leading Paris savants that tobacco and alcohol are conducive to unsightly hair.

Beauty doctors assert that a large percentage of their clientele are continually under treatment to have the roots of superfluous hair burned out electrically or otherwise eradicated. A recently announced new treatment, consisting of allying an ointment to the skin which ate away the hair, has proven extremely dangerous to the skin, ruining the complexions of hundreds of women who used it awhile and now are having the outer epidermis removed in the hope of regaining a fresh clear skin.

Patrolman Stephen Burke just can’t win!

Patrolman Stephen Burke, recently appointed to the force, was on duty at Coney Island last night when a man rushed up to him and told him that a woman had fallen off the pier at Buschman’s Hotel, Kensington Walk and the Bowery. Burke followed the man to the pierhead and on the way picked up Patrolman Dennis Ryan. Burke took off his coat, threw it on the pier and dived into the water, where he saw a woman splashing about.

When Burke tried to grab t he woman, she began to fight him off. Thinking that it was an attempt at suicide, Burke persisted, but the woman swam away from him. “Go away,” she cried, “or I’ll call the police.”

“I am a policeman myself,” called out Burke. “Are you in trouble?”

“Trouble?” echoed the woman. “I am taking a swim. But you are no policeman.”

“If you come ashore I can prove it,” said Burke. They went ashore and Burke found his coat but the shield was gone.

The bather said she was Ida Van Chenn of the Buschman Hotel and that she frequently went in bathing at night.

I doubt we’ll hear much more about this story and that’s a damn shame. I want to know who stole the jam!

Magistrate Bernard J. Douras, in the Washington Heights Court yesterday, selected tomorrow for hearing the testimony of Detective Frank J. Teed of the West 125th Street Station, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Clapper, tenants, and George McKent, superintendent, of an apartment house at 524 Riverside Drive, with a view to solving the mystery of the loss of Mrs. Clapper’s preserves. In the meanwhile, McKent was held in $1,000 bail on suspicion of being responsible for the disappearance of 210 jars of delectable “confiteur,” valued at $232, from Mrs. Clapper’s shelves.

At the hearing there will also appear another tenant in whose closet, it is alleged thirty-three of the jars, as yet unopened, were found. Detective Teed declined to give the name of this woman when McKent was in court, but he said she had received the preserves from McKent. McKent, on the other hand, says that Mrs. Clapper had lost thirty-two or thirty-three jars of preserves before he became superintendent of the building.

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