WRESTLING WITH A PROBLEM

If the Police Gazette has your back, you’re pretty much guaranteed to lose.

Above is another great boxing cover from the National Police Gazette, February 1951, along with some of the more interesting interior pages. The cover stars this time are Willie Pep and Sandy Saddler. Gazette editors were on the Pep bandwagon, but poor Willie, whose real name was Guglielmo Papaleo, didn’t get his title back. Saddler ko’d him in the ninth, beating him for the third time in four meetings. We’ve noticed the Gazette tends to back the guys who lose. We don’t think it’s due to a lack of boxing acumen, but rather the result of a deliberate strategy to snare readers by building up underdogs. In any case, if they’re in your corner, you better get an ambulance ready. You may also notice, looking at panel four, that this is the second time they’ve touted this Gotch character in their “Greatest Wrestlers of the Past” series. His name sounds like something you’d kill with an anti-fungal cream, but when we looked him up we discovered that Frank Alvin Gotch was the guy who popularized wrestling in the United States. He was one of the longest reigning champs ever, and was so beloved he even appeared regularly on stage, before dying in 1917. So there you go—not so much something to be creamed, as a guy who did the creaming. By the way, did you notice that the Gazette made an appearance in the new Sherlock Holmes film? Well, it excited us. Does that make us geeks? Don’t answer that.

Police Gazette, Willie Pep, Sandy Saddler, Frank Gotch, boxing, tabloid

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

December 4

1918—Wilson Goes to Europe

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails to Europe for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, France, becoming the first U.S. president to travel to Europe while in office.

December 4

1921—Arbuckle Manslaughter Trial Ends

In the U.S., a manslaughter trial against actor/director Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle ends with the jury deadlocked as to whether he had killed aspiring actress Virginia Rappe during rape and sodomy. Arbuckle was finally cleared of all wrongdoing after two more trials, but the scandal ruined his career and personal life.

December 3

1964—Mass Student Arrests in U.S.

In California, Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest at the UC Regents’ decision to forbid protests on university property.

December 3

1968—U.S. Unemployment Hits Low

Unemployment figures are released revealing that the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to 3.3 percent, the lowest rate for almost fifteen years. Going forward all the way to the current day, the figure never reaches this low level again.

December 2

1954—Joseph McCarthy Disciplined by Senate

In the United States, after standing idly by during years of communist witch hunts in Hollywood and beyond, the U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for conduct bringing the Senate into dishonor and disrepute. The vote ruined McCarthy’s career.

December 1

1955—Rosa Parks Sparks Bus Boycott

In the U.S., in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city’s African-American population were the bulk of the system’s ridership.