Mexico City erupted in religious crisis as President Calles' new anti-Catholic regulations took effect, with police discovering a plot to assassinate him led by a young city hall stenographer named Senorita Dolores Lemus. Seven women and two men were arrested in the conspiracy, which emerged from government employees' opposition to the religious crackdown. Meanwhile, Catholic priests withdrew from their churches in protest, leaving thousands of worshippers to pray in empty cathedrals guarded by police. The great Mexico City Cathedral was closed entirely while priests completed mandatory inventories of church treasures. Closer to home, tragedy struck Miami when the beautiful Baroness Royce-Garrett leaped to her death from the 18th floor of the Everglades Hotel. Her husband, Baron Royce-Garrett, was found attempting suicide with twine in a thicket, furious that she had broken their seven-year-old suicide pact by dying without him. The one-legged World War veteran told police they had agreed to 'die together' when they could no longer live together.

These stories capture the tensions bubbling beneath America's prosperous 1920s surface. The Cristero War brewing in Mexico would soon send thousands of refugees streaming across the U.S. border, inflaming American debates about immigration and Catholicism. Religious conflict abroad reminded Americans of their own culture wars between traditional values and modern life. Meanwhile, the bizarre Miami murder-suicide reflected the era's fascination with European aristocracy and tabloid sensationalism. As Prohibition created new forms of celebrity and scandal, newspapers fed an increasingly voyeuristic public appetite for dramatic crime stories that mixed sex, death, and exotic characters.

• The weather that day hit an unusual high of 77 degrees at midnight and only dropped to 73 at 8 p.m. — backwards from normal daily temperature patterns
• Baron Royce-Garrett spent an entire day in the thickets talking to birds and befriending a mysterious monkey for over an hour while waiting to hang himself
• The Baroness told her husband to 'be sure and buy the Herald' before coming home — essentially making him discover news of her own suicide in the paper
• Canada's prohibition allowed people to 'brew their own beer' and 'buy their own native wine' while banning whisky imports — a much looser version than American Prohibition
• Mexican Catholics were avoiding public transportation and buying only 'absolute necessaries' as part of an economic boycott against the religious regulations

• Aimee Semple McPherson, mentioned in the grocery list controversy, was one of America's first celebrity televangelists — her Angelus Temple in Los Angeles seated 5,300 people and had its own radio station
• The Cristero War referenced in the Mexico coverage would rage until 1929, inspiring Graham Greene's novel 'The Power and the Glory' and killing an estimated 250,000 people
• Commissioner Frederick Fenning, returning from vacation in the Thousand Islands, oversaw Washington D.C. during its massive 1920s building boom that created much of the federal architecture we see today
• The Evening Star was Washington's dominant newspaper — it would continue publishing until 1981, when it was bought and shuttered by the Washington Post
• That Miami Everglades Hotel where the Baroness jumped still stands today as a Marriott, though the 18th floor has been significantly renovated since 1926