Before you charge in here, maybe I should tell you I got to be a eunuch by doing exactly what you’re about to. Above, an April 1959 cover of Man’s Conquest, featuring a man about to risk life and limb to obtain a harem of girls. It’s actually a fitting theme, because inside the issue there’s an article about the infamous Short Creek raid of 1953, in which Arizona police and National Guardsmen stormed a fundamentalist Mormon compound where thirty-six men were living with their eighty-six wives and more than 250 children. Afterward, Arizona governor John Howard Pyle claimed that Short Creek inhabitants were engaged in a conspiracy to produce “white slaves”, but the public wasn’t buying it, and the fallout from the raid cost him his job when the next election rolled around. In an interesting twist, though, the LDS church, through its official newspaper the Deseret News, originally applauded the raid on the grounds that polygamy had been stricken from Mormon doctrine decades earlier.
Oh my, I don't know whether to call a lifeguard, the police, or British Petroleum. This Master Detective from July 1960 has cover art that incorporates two elements millions of people dream about every night—a beautiful girl and a dead BP executive. Inside is a grisly story on housewife Nancy Haas, who was murdered by nineteen year-old Robert Elton Edwards in March 1960. Edwards’ MO was to knock on the doors of houses with For Sale signs in the yards, then rob the people inside. In this case, he tried to chain Haas to a bed but when she struggled he shot her dead with a .22 pistol. She was the first woman Edwards had killed, and the last, because Haas’s daughter, who was only three, told police, “A bad man hurt mommy and drove away in a white car.” That simple description led to police arresting Edwards three days later in Arizona, driving a stolen white 1959 Plymouth Fury. Edwards pleaded guilty to murder and at his sentencing the judge said he’d contemplated sending Edwards to the gas chamber, but changed his mind. The judge explained: “I’m not doing you any favors.” Then he sentenced Edwards to life in prison.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
2003—Suzy Parker Dies
American model and actress Suzy Parker, who appeared the films Funny Face and Kiss Them for Me, was the first model to earn more than $100,000 a year, and who was a favorite target of the mid-century tabloids, dies at home in Montecito, California, surrounded by family friends, after electing to discontinue dialysis treatments. 1920—Negro National Baseball League Debuts
The first game of Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis, Indiana. The league, one of several that would be formed, was composed of The Chicago American Giants, The Detroit Stars, The Kansas City Monarchs, The Indianapolis ABCs, The St. Louis Giants, The Cuban Stars, The Dayton Marcos, and The Chicago Giants. 1955—Williams Wins Pulitzer
American playwright Tennessee Williams wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his controversial play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which tells the story of a southern family in crisis, explicitly deals with alcoholism, and contains a veiled subtext concerning homosexuality in southern society. In 1958 the play becomes a motion picture starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. 1945—Germany Announces Hitler's Death
German radio in Hamburg announces that Adolf Hitler was killed in Berlin, stating specifically that he had fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany. But in truth Hitler had committed suicide along with his mistress Eva Braun, and both bodies were immediately thereafter burned. 1960—Powers Is Shot Down over U.S.S.R.
Francis Gary Powers, flying in a Lockheed U-2 spy plane, is shot down over the Soviet Union. The U.S. denies the plane's purpose and mission, but is later forced to admit its role as a covert surveillance aircraft when the Soviet government produces its remains and reveals Powers, who had survived the shoot down. The incident triggers a major diplomatic crisis between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.
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