A gruesome murder mystery grips Windsor, Nova Scotia, as three men sit in jail accused of killing Freeman Harvie, whose headless body was discovered in his own cellar with his severed head found in a bag nearby. George Stanley, initially arrested after being spotted at Harvie's house when the victim was last seen alive, has now accused David Fisher and his son James of the actual killing, claiming he returned to find them in the cellar and later saw James washing blood from his hands. The knife Stanley borrowed from Fisher has been recovered, its blade covered in blood. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Attorney General William Moody personally took the stand in the major antitrust case against the meat packers, dramatically contradicting defense attorneys' interpretation of a letter from President Roosevelt. Twenty prohibition raids in Rumford Falls netted 18 arrests and seized large quantities of bottled and barreled beer, while the University of Maine prepares for baseball season under Coach Butman with an ambitious 20-game schedule despite losing key players.

These stories capture America in 1906 at a pivotal moment of Progressive Era reform. President Roosevelt's trust-busting campaign against corporate monopolies was in full swing, with the Attorney General himself taking the witness stand against the powerful meat-packing industry that Upton Sinclair had just exposed in 'The Jungle.' The prohibition raids in Maine foreshadowed the national temperance movement that would culminate in the 18th Amendment. This was an era when federal power was expanding to rein in corporate excess and moral concerns were driving social policy, setting the stage for decades of reform.

• The University of Maine's Junior Week was scheduled for May 21-26, featuring three home baseball games and a junior promenade on Friday evening — a full week of college festivities in 1906
• An ad for the E.E. Newbert Agency offered to buy old 'Tontine,' 'Distribution' or 'Accumulation' insurance policies, calling them 'unpopular and out of date' — apparently even life insurance had fashion trends
• William D. Buzzell, a prominent Houlton hotel keeper, would have turned exactly 80 years old on Friday if he hadn't died Tuesday morning — the timing noted with unusual precision
• The weather forecast promised 'fair and warmer' conditions, with specific mention that eastern Maine would be the exception to the warming trend

• The meat packers case mentioned Chicago's Armour Company — founded by Philip Armour, who once said 'I like to turn bristles, blood, bones, and the inside and outside of pigs and bullocks into revenue.' His company would eventually become part of ConAgra Foods
• Attorney General Moody, taking the stand in Chicago, had been Roosevelt's former law partner in Haverhill, Massachusetts — talk about bringing your old law firm connections to the highest levels of government
• The American Board of Foreign Missions meeting in Portland included Rev. Arthur H. Smith speaking about China — this was just one year after the Russo-Japanese War ended, with China becoming a major focus of American missionary and commercial interests
• Those prohibition raids in Rumford Falls were happening 14 years before national Prohibition — Maine had been a 'dry' state since 1851, making it a testing ground for temperance enforcement nationwide