Six people died as devastating floods and storms ravaged the Midwest, with Hannibal, Missouri completely inundated—80 city blocks underwater forcing families to flee to higher ground. Bear Creek had burst its banks while Springfield, Illinois saw five and a half inches of rain in just 24 hours. The Mississippi River was running "bank-high" at Quincy, threatening to overflow, while thousands of early autumn tourists found themselves stranded as highways washed out and rail traffic slowed to a crawl across Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and Illinois. Meanwhile, a bizarre legal drama was unfolding in Nebraska where two bootleggers, Ray Carson and Thomas Nelson, were shunning farewell feast invitations as they prepared to enter jail Tuesday for bread and water sentences—20 days on nothing but bread and water out of their 60-day terms. Judge Orville Chatt had become notorious for these constitutional but cruel punishments, having imposed them on everyone from a prominent physician to the son of a former state senator. As one 17-year-old who'd just finished ten days on the diet put it: "It's awful. I'll never be able to look at a loaf of bread again."

These stories capture America in 1926 at a fascinating crossroads—prosperity and chaos existing side by side. While President Coolidge was carefully orchestrating visits from business leaders at his summer White House to showcase the nation's booming economy (the automotive industry, mail-order business, and railroads all reporting strong numbers), Mother Nature was delivering a harsh reality check to the Midwest farm belt that fed the country. The bread-and-water sentences reveal the extreme lengths some local officials went to enforce Prohibition, even as the policy was increasingly unpopular. Meanwhile, international diplomacy was advancing with Germany's imminent entry into the League of Nations—part of the post-WWI world order that America had helped create but refused to fully join.

• The South Bend News-Times boasted a Sunday circulation of exactly 25,101 copies and cost ten cents—about $1.65 in today's money for a 44-page Sunday paper
• Edward Coppler survived being buried under 15 feet of debris when a cyclone destroyed his barn in Ohio, rescued by a force of 100 men who dug him out
• Judge Orville Chatt once sentenced his own fraternity brother, R. T. Huston (son of a former state senator), to the bread and water punishment for bootlegging
• Edwin K. Roberts, father-in-law of famous Washington Senators pitcher Walter Johnson, was challenging Senator Oddie for the Republican nomination in Nevada
• The Sacco-Vanzetti defense fund had raised between $350,000 and $400,000—roughly $5-6 million today—with support from government officials in France, Italy, Germany, and England

• That Portuguese convict Celestino Madeiros promising to clear Sacco and Vanzetti? His confession would indeed lead to a new hearing, but both Italian anarchists would still be executed in 1927, sparking worldwide protests and riots
• Senator James Watson's controversial female campaign manager Mrs. Vivian Tracy Wheatcraft was operating her 'poison squad' from Portland, Maine while working with the national Republican committee—a early example of opposition research and whisper campaigns
• Germany's entry into the League of Nations mentioned on the front page would last only seven years—Hitler would withdraw Germany in 1933, helping doom the organization America never joined
• The submarine S-51 disaster mentioned killed 34 men when the steamship City of Rome rammed it—one of several peacetime submarine disasters that would lead to major safety reforms in the U.S. Navy
• President Coolidge's careful prosperity campaign from White Pine Camp was working—1926 was indeed near the peak of the Roaring Twenties boom, just three years before the crash