November 25: ON THIS DAY in 1905, bones of the ‘King of Beasts’ uncovered
ON THIS DAY IN 1905, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Out of the rocks in Northern Montana, scientists have dug the skeleton of the real King of Beasts. An expedition sent out by the American Museum of Natural History in New York has just reported the resurrection of the largest flesh-eating land animal thus far known to the world. This constitutes one of the most remarkable finds in the recent history of paleontology. The curator of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology of this museum, Professor Henry F. Osborn, under whose direction the expedition was sent out, has conferred upon this newly discovered monster the title ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex.’ In plain English this means the ‘Tyrant King Saurian,’ or the King of Tyrant Saurians. The remains of this denizen of the past are being shipped to New York in a number of carefully made boxes, some of the boxes weighing over two tons. Every bone will be placed in its proper place in the skeleton, missing bones will be modeled out of plaster of paris, and in a few months the completed skeleton will be placed on exhibition in the halls of the museum, where visitors may come and see what this king of beasts a few million years ago was like … Mr. Tyrannosaurus was large and strong enough to attack the great three-horned Triceratops, one of the most interesting of the Dinosaur family, a fine skeleton which has recently been set up in the National Museum at Washington.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1921, the Eagle reported, “Designation of Crown Prince Hirohito as Regent of Japan follows reports which have been in circulation for about a year that Emperor Yoshihito was in bad physical condition. A dispatch to a Honolulu newspaper in May of last year reported that he had suffered a mental and physical breakdown. Early last month a rumor that he was dead circulated in Tokio, and the imperial household, in denying it at that time, stated that he was so ill it was feared that he could not recover … The regent, who is only 20 years old, had already accomplished a great deal in establishing a more liberal understanding between the Imperial Court and the people of the empire. He has already abandoned the ancient idea of imperial aloofness.”
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