A shocking poisoning plot dominates the front page as three young brothers from the Riley family confessed to helping their older siblings contaminate a schoolhouse well with Paris green, endangering 15 students and a teacher in Warsaw, Indiana. The twisted scheme stemmed from a petty community quarrel over teacher assignments - when the Riley sisters were passed over for positions at the Mount Tabor school, the family allegedly sought revenge by poisoning the water supply. Thirteen children became violently ill, though all recovered. State chemists found enough poison "to kill an army" in the well. Meanwhile, the death toll from the Francisco mine disaster climbed to 31 as Jesse Williams succumbed to his injuries, and Pat McDermott's murder trial for the killing of crusading newspaper publisher Don Mellett begins Monday in Canton, Ohio, with 18 witnesses ready to testify.

These stories capture the darker undercurrents of 1920s America beneath the Jazz Age glamour. Rural communities were still tight-knit and insular, where school board politics could explode into deadly vendettas. The mine disaster reflects the dangerous working conditions that killed thousands annually before modern safety regulations. The McDermott trial represents the era's newspaper wars, as crusading publishers battled bootleggers and corrupt officials during Prohibition, often paying with their lives.

• The Riley family poisoning involved "paris green" - actually an arsenic-based pesticide commonly used on farms, showing how deadly agricultural chemicals were casually accessible to families
• Young Margaret and Barbara McLaughlin donated 82 cents to the Christmas fund for poor children - money they earned and saved, even skipping a 20-cent school movie to add to their contribution
• The South Bend News-Times boasted a circulation of exactly 25,876 readers and cost 10 cents for a hefty 52-page Sunday edition
• Irish tenor John McCormack testified as a character witness for oil magnate E.L. Doheny, walking into court "muffled in a big black overcoat decorated with a huge black fur collar" despite a court order against overcoats
• The Christmas charity aimed to help 1,000 poor children at an average cost of just $4 each, including "the greatest dinner they had ever had" plus clothing gifts

• John McCormack, who testified for Doheny, was one of the world's most famous tenors - his 1904 recording of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" helped make it the unofficial anthem of World War I
• The Fall-Doheny oil conspiracy trial mentioned here was part of the Teapot Dome scandal that would become synonymous with government corruption, eventually sending Interior Secretary Albert Fall to prison
• Paris green, the poison used in the school well, was so common that it was sold in corner stores - it wouldn't be banned for agricultural use until the 1960s due to its extreme toxicity
• Mine disasters like Francisco were tragically routine in the 1920s - over 2,000 miners died annually during this period, making it one of America's deadliest professions
• The paper's Christmas fund of $4 per child would be equivalent to about $65 today, showing how far a small donation could stretch in 1926