A deadly train collision dominates the front page as the Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh Limited slammed into a stopped Pittsburgh-Washington express near Blairsville, Pennsylvania, killing at least 18 people and injuring 50 more. Four sleeping cars were completely smashed in the wreck at Gray station. Meanwhile, in Washington, Senator James Reed subjected Wayne Wheeler, the nation's top 'dry' enforcement official, to a blistering interrogation about Anti-Saloon League finances, revealing the organization raised up to $200,000 in 1925 while Wheeler earned $8,000 annually. The questioning rivaled the famous Bryan-Darrow clash from the Scopes trial in its intensity. Elsewhere, tragedy struck an Ohio church celebration when a fireworks explosion killed two men and injured two others during a religious festival at St. Roce's Catholic Church in Youngstown. In lighter news, Mrs. Albert Brickhouse of Warman Avenue successfully fought off a burglar by hurling a soapy dishrag at the intruder, who fled while wiping suds from his eyes. The day brought unseasonably cold weather to New York, where temperatures dropped 30 degrees in 18 hours to just 54 degrees.

This front page captures America in 1926 wrestling with the contradictions of Prohibition. While Wayne Wheeler defended the Anti-Saloon League's activities, another story revealed that good beer flowed freely in Pittsburgh saloons displaying Pepper-Fisher campaign signs during the recent primary. The bitter Senate hearings exposed the vast enforcement machinery behind the 'noble experiment' that was increasingly under attack. The deadly train wreck reflected the booming but still dangerous state of American transportation, while the massive Catholic Eucharistic Congress beginning in Chicago—expecting one million pilgrims—showed how religious faith remained central to American life even as the country modernized rapidly during the Roaring Twenties.

• A telephone exchange clerk earning just $150 a month is engaged to marry Elizabeth Frances Du Pont, member of the wealthy Du Pont chemical fortune family—a true rags-to-riches romance
• The temperature readings show it was already 83 degrees by noon in Indianapolis, making New York's 54-degree weather seem especially shocking
• Mrs. Margaret Goolsby was arrested for bigamy after her second husband dared her to marry him by calling her 'a coward if you don't'—and now he's the one who filed charges against her
• A young man attended the Indianapolis 500 race, then vanished after being picked up by someone with Missouri plates—his abandoned car was found in a field where he'd stopped to change tires

• Wayne Wheeler's $8,000 annual salary as America's top prohibition enforcer equals about $140,000 today—decent pay for the man trying to keep 100 million Americans sober
• The Eucharistic Congress expecting one million Catholic pilgrims in Chicago would be among the largest religious gatherings in U.S. history—Chicago's total population was only 2.7 million at the time
• That train wreck happened on the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was then the largest corporation in the world by revenue and employed more people than the entire U.S. Army
• The Anti-Saloon League's $150,000-200,000 annual budget mentioned in Wheeler's testimony was funding a nationwide network of investigators, lobbyists, and enforcers—the equivalent of about $3 million today
• The Van Camp estate mentioned in the probate story belonged to the family behind Van Camp's pork and beans, which had become a household staple by advertising heavily during World War I