WORSE COMES TO WORST

A sequel dealing with the world’s worst men ran more than 100 volumes.

This is a rather nice 1959 edition of Bernard O’Donnell’s The World’s Worst Women, a collection of bios on assorted female murderers. Among them are Belle Gunness, who we wrote about several years ago, Martha Wise, who was known as the “Borgia of America,” Vera Renczi, who poisoned thirty-five people in Bucharest, Romania, and Anna Marie Hahn, who killed five people in Cincinnati, Ohio. Other famed killers include such colorfully named characters as the Red Witch of Buchenwald (Ilse Koch), the Poison Widow of Liege (Marie Alexandrine Becker), the Ogress of Paris (Jeanne Weber), and the Angel Makers of Nagyrév, a group of women who poisoned up to 300 people in Hungary. We were just kidding about a sequel dealing with men. Finding enough paper to print something like that would wipe out half the world’s forests…

Romania, Hungary, Nagyrév, Bucharest, Liege, Paris, Cincinnati, Pedigree Books, Bernard O’Donnell, Belle Gunness, Martha Wise, Anna Marie Hahn, Vera Renczi, Ilse Koch, Marie Alexandrine Becker, Jeanne Weber, murder, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 13

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

February 12

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

February 12

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

February 11

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

February 10

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.