Evening Star
- HUNDREDS PERISH AS QUAKE SHAKES WHOLE OF ARMENIA
- ISLE OF PINES STORM TOLL IS 38; 17 AMERICANS ARE AMONG DEAD
- 200 Wild Buffaloes, Growing Wilder, To Be Killed Off on Salt Lake Island
The Evening Star of October 23, 1926, carried three wire reports of disaster and wildlife. An Associated Press dispatch from Leninakan described an earthquake that shook all of Armenia the previous night, killing many people, toppling houses and wrecking telegraph lines, while stressing that the American Near East Relief staff and the 9,000 orphans housed in old Czarist stone barracks came through without loss of life. A Havana dispatch relayed survivors' accounts that the Caribbean hurricane had killed 38 people on the Isle of Pines, 17 of them Americans, injured more than 200 and caused losses put at $50,000,000, with some villages destroyed. A Consolidated Press item from Salt Lake City announced that 200 increasingly wild buffaloes on a Great Salt Lake island would be hunted down in November, describing herds that fled to the peaks rather than let riders near.
Translation
HUNDREDS PERISH AS QUAKE SHAKES WHOLE OF ARMENIA
By the Associated Press.
LENINAKAN, Armenia, October 23. - Many persons were killed and scores [?] and the whole population was thrown into panic by an earthquake which shook all of Armenia late last night. Many houses collapsed, telegraph wires were wrecked, trees uprooted and cattle killed. There was no loss of life among the large personnel of the American Near East Relief or the 9,000 Armenian orphans under its care. This was due to the sturdy construction of the old stone Czarist Military Barracks in which they are housed and the splendid discipline maintained by the Americans among the children.
ISLE OF PINES STORM TOLL IS 38; 17 AMERICANS ARE AMONG DEAD
By the Associated Press.
HAVANA, October 23. - The picturesque little Isle of Pines paid a heavy toll in deaths, injured and material damage when the Caribbean hurricane passed over it Wednesday morning on its way to Cuba to spread further death and devastation. Survivors reaching here say that 38 persons were killed, among them 17 Americans; that more than 200 persons were injured and that the property and other losses will amount to $50,000,000. The steamer Cristobal Colon brought to Batabano, Cuba, 52 injured persons [?] Some villages on the isle were destroyed.
200 Wild Buffaloes, Growing Wilder, To Be Killed Off on Salt Lake Island
By Consolidated Press.
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, October 23. - Two hundred buffaloes, which have been getting wilder and wilder for the past 30 years on a 30,000-acre island in the middle of Great Salt Lake, will be hunted down during November. Contrary to the opinion of some Westerners who declare the animals are as "tame as old bossy in the back yard," the buffalo have become extremely wary and will race en masse from the salty lake shore to the highest peaks of the island rather than permit riders to approach them.
Context
How strong was the 1926 Leninakan earthquake?
The quake described by the Associated Press struck at 21:59 local time on 22 October 1926 along the border of Soviet Armenia and eastern Turkey, and it is known as both the Kars and the Leninakan earthquake. Modern catalogues give it a surface-wave magnitude of 6.0 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX, with 360 casualties. The Soviet geologist Pyotr Lebedev, reporting in 1927, counted up to 300 people killed in Soviet Armenia and about as many seriously injured. The headline's "hundreds perish" therefore falls roughly within later assessments, although the dispatch itself, written the next day, gives no number and says only that "many persons were killed." The statement that the Near East Relief staff and 9,000 orphans survived thanks to the stone barracks and American discipline is the paper's own report and is not addressed in these later accounts of the quake.
How the October 1926 hurricane struck the Isle of Pines
The storm the Havana dispatch calls "the Caribbean hurricane" is known today as the 1926 Havana hurricane. As a major hurricane it made landfall on the Isle of Pines, the island's name until 1978, at 0800 UTC on October 20, which was a Wednesday, matching the dispatch's "Wednesday morning"; it then went on to strike western Cuba. Later accounts record at least 38 deaths and more than 200 injured across the island, the same figures the survivors gave in Havana. In Nueva Gerona many buildings were destroyed and only two dwellings were left standing in Santa Fe, which fits the paper's line that some villages were wiped out. The storm went on to kill at least 58 people in Havana itself. The count of 17 Americans among the dead and the $50,000,000 loss estimate rest on survivors' statements as relayed by the paper and are not confirmed in later accounts of the storm.
Why so many Americans lived on the Isle of Pines
The 17 Americans among the dead belonged to a settler community that grew out of a long-unresolved question of sovereignty. When the United States set the conditions for leaving newly independent Cuba, the Platt Amendment provided that the Isle of Pines "shall be omitted from the proposed constitutional boundaries of Cuba, the title thereto being left to future adjustment by treaty." Americans invested on the island while the question stayed open. During the Senate debate over the treaty, Senator William E. Borah argued that U.S. citizens, 700 of the island's 4,250 residents, owned 90 percent of the land and had invested in the expectation that the island would gain a status like Puerto Rico's. The Senate nevertheless ratified the Hay–Quesada Treaty recognizing Cuban sovereignty on March 13, 1925, over the objections of some four hundred American citizens and companies who owned or controlled about 95 percent of the island's land. When the hurricane struck in October 1926, the island's American residents had been living under confirmed Cuban sovereignty for about a year and a half.
Who owned the Great Salt Lake buffalo, and why the 1926 hunt?
The herd in the dispatch matches the bison of Antelope Island in Great Salt Lake, which were introduced to the island in 1893; the article itself does not name the island. John E. Dooley sold the herd to A. H. Leonard in 1924. Leonard first meant to sell the animals to zoos but could not corral them, and he had hoped that a national park would be established on the island to preserve the herd. When that plan came to nothing he turned to expanding cattle ranching, which required cutting the number of bison. The hunt took place in November 1926 amid protests from around the nation, and Utah Governor George Dern declined to prevent it, saying that the island and the herd were privately owned. Hunters on horseback with modern rifles reduced a herd of roughly 300 to 400 animals to about 50. The paper's figures of 200 animals and 30 years of growing wildness are lower than these later estimates, and its picture of animals racing away from riders matches Leonard's failure to round them up.
Original
HUNDREDS PERISH AS QUAKE SHAKES WHOLE OF ARMENIA
LENINAKAN, Armenia, October 23. - Many persons were killed and scores [?] and the whole population was thrown into panic by an earthquake which shook all of Armenia late last night. Many houses collapsed, telegraph wires were wrecked, trees uprooted and cattle killed. There was no loss of life among the large personnel of the American Near East Relief or the 9, 000 Armenian orphans under its care. This was due to the sturdy construction of the old stone Czarist Military Barracks in which they are housed and the splendid discipline maintained by the Americans among the children.
ISLE OF PINES STORM TOLL IS 38; 17 AMERICANS ARE AMONG DEAD
HAVANA, October 23. - The picturesque little Isle of Pines paid a heavy toll in deaths, injured and material damage when the Caribbean hurricane passed over it Wednesday morning on its way to Cuba to spread further death and devastation. Survivors reaching here say that 38 persons were killed, among them 17 Americans; that more than 200 persons were injured and that the property and other losses will amount to $ 50, 000, 000. The steamer Cristobal Colon brought to Batabano, Cuba, 52 injured persons [?] Some villages on the isle were destroyed.
200 Wild Buffaloes, Growing Wilder, To Be Killed Off on Salt Lake Island
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, October 23. - Two hundred buffaloes, which have been getting wilder and wilder for the past 30 years on a 30, 000acre island in the middle of Great Salt Lake, will be hunted down during November. Contrary to the opinion of some Westerners who declare the animals are as " tame as old bossy in the back yard, " the buffalo have become extremely wary and will race en masse from the salty lake shore to the highest peaks of the island rather than permit riders to approach them.
Source: Holding institution