January 1909 - January 18, 1909 (Monday)

January 18, 1909 (Monday)

• Robert Franklin Stroud of Juneau, Alaska, shot and killed Charlie Von Dahmer. Convicted of manslaughter at 18, Stroud spent the rest of his life in federal prisons. While in Leavenworth, where he murdered a guard, he raised canaries and authored two books, Diseases of Canaries and Stroud's Digest on the Diseases of Birds. He would be immortalized as The Birdman of Alcatraz in a book and a film of the same name. However, by the time that he was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942, his work with canaries had stopped. Stroud died on November 21, 1963.
• Congressman William Willett, Jr. (D-N.Y.) denounced outgoing President Theodore Roosevelt, in terms so outrageous that the House voted 126-78 to terminate his speech. The Washington Post described the speech as "so bitter and sensational that it seemed as though its author had raked the dictionary for adjectives to vilify the chief executive". By the time that he said "the Gargoyle is about to grin its last grin", he was being ruled out of order, and he skipped to the end to say "the Nero who fiddled while Rome was burning will be out of power on March 4th." By voice vote on January 27, the House expunged the speech from the Congressional Record for "language improper".