Personalities at Play in 1904 Cambridge Springs Chess Tournament The story of four top players and who prevailed by Jonathan Burdick
chessgames.com
The 1904 Cambridge Springs International Chess Congress gathered some of the time s greatest talents, and most disparate personalities. Among them were the calculating German mathematician and reigning world champion Dr. Emanuel Lasker, who had recently recovered from a nearly fatal bout with typhoid fever; the modest and agreeable Harry Nelson Pillsbury, who could play blindfolded; the stubborn and determined David Janowski, noted as a sharp tactician; and the young and erratic Frank James Marshall, who won the tournament with his unconventional and unpredictable style.
A Pennsylvania oil-era carouser who died on New Year s Eve a century ago was remembered for lavish spending here in the Jan. 3, 1921, edition of the Erie Daily Times. Oldtime Erieites, commenting on the recent death of Coal Oil Johnny Steele, recall the fact that he once staged a $1,000 dinner in Erie and that one of the fixtures in a prominent church in Erie was purchased by the eccentric spendthrift, who wasted a fortune and died poor.
Steele inherited Oil City area property leased for oil drilling from his adoptive mother in 1864. Edwin Drake had first drilled for oil nearby in 1859.
It doesn t require liquor, after all, to assure the success of a New Year s celebration, as thousands of Erieites proved Friday night.
The pronouncement by the Erie Dispatch Herald on Jan. 1, 1921, after the first New Year s Eve of Prohibition seemed half-hearted.
But for Erieites in that new year, the continuing prohibition against alcohol was one of just a few clouds on the horizon.
The city was in the midst of a building boom.
Women had voted for the first time in the November presidential election, helping to elect Warren Harding.
Army aviators had flown 9,000 miles from New York to Nome, Alaska, in 111 hours over three months and one week, blazing the way for more postal air service routes.