SHAFT’S REVENGE

Two burglars take the express to the bottom floor.

There are robberies, robberies gone wrong, and robberies gone horribly wrong. In the latter category was this effort by Robert Green and Jacob Jagendorf. Green was a night watchman (some accounts say elevator operator) at a New York City shirt factory, and apparently conceived a way to use his access to pull off a theft of expensive silk fabric. Late one night, he and Jagendorf stopped an elevator on the fifth floor of the building, wedged the doors open, and proceeded to load in bolts of the pricy fabric, doing so in the dark to avoid alerting any observers outside the building. At some point the elevator rose to the tenth floor, Green and Jagendorf stepped into the now open shaft in the dark, and plunged five stories—“clasping each other as they dropped,” according to one news story. Since they aren’t clasping each other in the photo, we have no idea how newspapers knew any clasping occurred, but we buy it. We’d definitely try to clasp something in that moment. In fact, we’d go way beyond clasping and try to land on our partner. Probably wouldn’t work, but either way we wouldn’t have to apologize. Sadly, both Green and Jagendorf were killed, making the macabre tableau you see here. That was today in 1915.

New York City, Robert Green, Jacob Jagendorf

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 18

1954—First Church of Scientology Established

The first Scientology church, based on the writings of science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, is established in Los Angeles, California. Since then, the city has become home to the largest concentration of Scientologists in the world, and its ranks include high-profile adherents such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

February 17

1933—Blaine Act Passes

The Blaine Act, a congressional bill sponsored by Wisconsin senator John J. Blaine, is passed by the U.S. Senate and officially repeals the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, aka the Volstead Act, aka Prohibition. The repeal is formally adopted as the 21st Amendment to the Constitution on December 5, 1933.

February 17

1947—Voice of America Begins Broadcasting into U.S.S.R.

The state radio channel known as Voice of America and controlled by the U.S. State Department, begins broadcasting into the Soviet Union in Russian with the intent of countering Soviet radio programming directed against American leaders and policies. The Soviet Union responds by initiating electronic jamming of VOA broadcasts.

February 16

1937—Carothers Patents Nylon

Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanideâ€”not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juiceâ€”resulting in his death in late 1937.

February 15

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.