Miscellany: Feb. 18, 1924

“TIME brings all things”

On the Montana in midocean, “while ten yaks and a big brown bear screeched in frantic chorus,” Hans Fimm, one-legged animal trainer, fought several hours with six monkeys escaped from their cages. Fimm was badly bitten “from neck to heel.” One monkey was killed, the rest captured.

In Mineola, N. Y., at a “freak animal show,” Jack Johnson, “monkey-faced mule,” kicked Rosie, cow, in the throat. Rosie was a freak because her heart was located in her throat, its pulsations plainly visible. Kicked in the heart, she died.

In Los Angeles, a white horse, carrying a nude cinema lady enacting Lady Godiva’s ride, went wild, threw the lady, stamped on her arm, leaped into the orchestra pit, landed among a crowd of 450 extras.

In Rome, at a filming of Quo Vadis, a cinema lioness became “highly excited,” jumped over the barrier, landed upon an aged “super,” mauled him ferociously. The super died. Young Gabrielino d’Annunzio, son of Italy’s famed soldier-poet, who was one of three directing the filming, had no lion license, was sought by the carabinieri.

On Broadway, Manhattan, a crowd of men and boys, “whooping, yelling, laughing,” gave chase to a “small white animal hopping and leaping along the pavement.” One Griebe, patrolman, dove for the animal, clutched him with his buckskin gloves, took him to the station house. Experts said the animal was a ferret.

In Berlin, Mary, aged 41, “only elephant in the zoo,” died. Her carcass, old and tough, was used to feed other animals. In order to enable “even the most savage lions to eat the flesh,” it was necessary to “boil it for a week.”

In Boston, one Phineas Loring offered a reward of $50 for the best word to take the place of a “spinster,” because he felt “convinced that many marriages are effected due to the odium attached to the words ‘spinster’ an ‘old maid.'” The new word is to indicate a “condition of triumph rather than defeat,” thereby forestalling such marriages “and so serving humanity.”