President Coolidge just handed prohibition enforcement a massive boost, issuing an executive order that would allow state, county, and municipal police officers to serve as federal prohibition agents — potentially as 'dollar a year men' serving dual roles. Assistant Secretary Andrews, the man behind the plan, believes this will 'greatly augment the federal dry forces' at a time when bootleggers like 'Scar-face Al' Capone are allegedly running entire towns. Speaking of Capone, Chicago police believe he's taken control of Forest View, a tiny suburb originally incorporated to honor World War dead, turning it into what they're calling 'Capone-ville' — a hotbed of vice, gambling, and illegal liquor manufacturing. Meanwhile, closer to home in New Britain, the streets aren't much calmer. Michael Pallicita, 28, got so drunk he refused to pay 30 cents for a hot dog, fell and cut his head, then completely destroyed a doctor's office — smashing medicine cabinets, microscopes, and throwing pills everywhere after the physician treated his wounds. The damage exceeded $150. And in perhaps the strangest story of all, Guido Schmidt of 51 Church Street left town Monday for a job in Detroit but ended up arrested at Niagara Falls for stripping naked on a crowded train and running up and down the aisles.

This front page captures America in 1926 at a crossroads between law and lawlessness. Prohibition, now six years old, wasn't working — it had created a vast criminal empire exemplified by Al Capone's alleged control of entire municipalities. Coolidge's desperate attempt to deputize local police as federal agents shows how overwhelmed authorities had become. The casual violence and public drunkenness reported alongside international labor strikes and political upheaval in Poland reflects a nation grappling with rapid social change, where traditional authority was crumbling and new forms of chaos — both criminal and cultural — were filling the void.

• The Chinese junk Amoy — the first craft of its kind to cross the Pacific and come through the Panama Canal to the Atlantic — is starting a world cruise from Stratford, Connecticut, captained by Alfred Nilson with plans to include Hartford in the tour
• Forest View was incorporated just 18 months ago and originally 'dedicated to the memory of World war dead' before allegedly becoming Capone's vice headquarters with a pardoned convict named Frank 'Porky' Dillon as police chief
• An angry bull escaped from an East Side Hide Company barn in Hartford and 'charged madly through several streets' endangering school children before being cornered by 'a half dozen police officers and scores of citizens'
• A 103-year-old woman in an unnamed location celebrated her birthday today — she voted in the 1924 presidential election but 'has felt too feeble to do so since'

• That executive order allowing local police to become federal prohibition agents would prove largely ineffective — by 1930, there were still only about 3,000 federal prohibition agents trying to police the entire United States
• Al Capone, mentioned as controlling 'Capone-ville,' was at the height of his power in 1926, earning an estimated $60 million annually (about $900 million today) from his bootlegging empire
• The damage estimate of 'more than $150' from the drunken doctor's office rampage would equal about $2,300 in today's money — quite a bar tab aftermath
• Chinese junks like the Amoy were ancient designs dating back over 1,000 years, making this trans-Pacific voyage in a traditional craft particularly remarkable for 1926
• The three-cent newspaper price meant this 32-page edition cost about 45 cents in today's money — when newspapers were still America's primary source of daily information