President Coolidge is forcing the pace on the massive Muscle Shoals power project, summoning seven senators to the White House to demand immediate action on creating a joint commission to lease the Tennessee Valley facility. The Senate Agriculture Committee voted 11-5 to move forward, despite fierce opposition from committee chairman Senator Norris, who wasn't even invited to Coolidge's meeting. Southern delegates are protesting, fearing the $100,000+ project will be sold to private power interests without protecting regional manufacturing and agricultural concerns. Meanwhile, extraordinary security surrounded a courthouse in Lexington, Kentucky, where Ed Harris, a Black man accused of assault and the murder of Clarence Bryant's family, faced trial. One thousand National Guard troops, three tanks, three pieces of artillery, and machine guns protected the courthouse from potential lynch mobs. Harris was sentenced to hang on March 5. In Alexandria, poison rum claimed another victim as Albert Anderson, 22, died after drinking from a jug found beside his unconscious body in an alley.

These stories capture America in 1926 at a crossroads between progress and peril. The Muscle Shoals fight represents the era's central tension over government versus private enterprise—this massive power project would eventually become the foundation of FDR's Tennessee Valley Authority. Coolidge's heavy-handed intervention shows how even 'small government' Republicans wielded federal power when it suited business interests. The heavily militarized courthouse and poison liquor deaths reveal the darker currents beneath the Roaring Twenties' glamorous surface. Jim Crow justice required tanks and machine guns to prevent mob violence, while Prohibition's black market was literally killing people with industrial alcohol poisoning—a weekly occurrence that newspapers covered almost routinely by this point.

• The Washington Daily News cost just one cent—roughly 17 cents today—making it cheaper than a modern vending machine soda
• An Alexandria shipyard worker named Ossie Dodson was crushed to death when his clothing caught in electric crane cogs, and his body had to be taken to the D.C. morgue because the shipyard was technically in District territory
• Grace Harris, 24, jumped from a moving car at Third and K Street after a disagreement with her male companion Robert Brent, but was found to be uninjured when taken to Casualty Hospital
• D.C. commissioners opposed allowing boxing in the capital, warning it would bring 'an influx of undesirable persons' to Washington
• The paper promoted a serial story called 'Her Quest For Love' specifically targeting government workers, noting that three main characters were 'in the government' in this 'Washington story about people you know'

• Senator Norris, excluded from Coolidge's White House meeting, would eventually get his revenge—he'd later author the legislation creating the Tennessee Valley Authority that turned Muscle Shoals into a massive public power project, the opposite of what Coolidge wanted
• That Green Acres, Florida tornado that killed a baby and injured 100 was part of an unusually active winter storm season—1926 would later bring the devastating Great Miami Hurricane that essentially ended the Florida land boom
• The machine guns protecting the Lexington courthouse were likely Lewis guns left over from World War I—by 1926, the U.S. had such massive military surplus that local authorities could borrow heavy weapons for civil disturbances
• Alexandria's shipyard where Ossie Dodson died was probably building vessels for the expanding U.S. merchant marine—America was just becoming a major maritime power after commandeering German ships during WWI
• Those 'poison rum' deaths were so common that newspapers had developed standard terminology—industrial alcohol poisoning killed an estimated 10,000 Americans annually during Prohibition's peak years