The drippy dweebs whose balloon overshot Montreal and other great stuffe!

Ahh.. good old 1910, seems like yesterday don't it? This photo is of August Post, seated and his good basket-buddy Alan R. Hawley. The duo floated up north in a balloon from St. Louis. They landed somewhere in the woods near Chicoutimi in late October and were pretty much written off for dead. $12,000 was offered for anybody who could find these guys and that's the equivalent of $600 trillion in today's money. But just like that they found their way to safety and glory as they had accomplished some feat that was significant at the time and so the cash was spent in celebrations in New York City.

Item 2- In 1978 syndicated columnist Jim Bishop wrote an unusual obit about a Montrealer named Alicia Duclos. The young woman was so stunningly beautiful that all of the top flight suitors begged for her hand in marriage. But she held them all in contempt except for one who could paint her beauty on canvas, Francois-Marie Duclos drew a 21-square foot portrait reflecting her incredible beauty and it hung on their wall. She would occasionally crook her finger to allow him her intimate company but their marriage was otherwise useless and only lasted seven years when he told her that the portrait would ruin her. And indeed it apparently did, she went a bit crazy and died a drunk at age 65.
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Item 3- A century ago on May 1, 1912, lefties held a parade in which a little girl carried a red flag down from St. Lawrence and Prince Arthur to old Montreal. The flag was guarded.
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Item 4- Around that same time people are regularly being tossed in jail for months at a time for petty theft, one guy got three months for stealing combs, another six months for stealing one of the city's first telephone booths, but occasionally people stood up for their rights such a a guy named Dini who was busted for vagrancy on Cadieux (De Bullion). He took the case to court and argued that he was on private property at the time so police had no right to arrest him. The judge decided in his favour and the two cops had to pay up $75 each to the man.