United States To Import Babies From France by 2020

    The year 1897 was a monumental one chesswise. The Anglo-American cable match, a series of yearly matches between teams from the US and Great Britain conducted over transatlantic cable, was held in mid-February. The British team won by a single game, tying the series at one match each.
     The first international tournament for ladies was held in London from June 23 until July 3, 1897, and was won by Miss Mary Rudge. Later in the year the Internationales Turnier Berlin celebrated seventy years of the Berliner Schachgesellschaft and was played from September 13 to October 4, 1897. It was a race between young masters Rudolf Charousek and Carl Walbrodt with Charousek eventually prevailing. Unfortunately, they both would die within a few years, Charousek in 1900 and Walbrodt in 1902. 
     In Moscow between November 6 1896 and January 14, 1897, Emanuel Lasker defended his world championship for the first time when he defeated William Steinitz whose title he had taken in 1894. 
     The New York Times ran a story about the pathetic mental condition of Steinitz at the time. While he was in Moscow someone presented him with a device that looked like a silver snuffbox and told him that it was a new invention like a telephone. 

     He was told that when he spoke into a hole in the box, the sound would be transmitted to a wire and could be heard at any distance. Steinitz took the box to his room and began experimenting, imagining that he had a wonderful invention which would bring him a fortune. His secretary told him his son in America could hear him. He was not feeling well at the time; his nerves were unstrung because of his chess and the statement of his secretary made him even more nervous. Later he was taken to an asylum on the recommendation of his secretary. 
     When Steinitz died on August 12, 1900, the Times reported “...he would experiment with his wireless telephone. His theory was that he could use his willpower to convey words any distance. For hours he would stand in his room trying to call up various people he knew in Europe. After he was tired of these experiments he would devote his time to writing his books.” 
     Newspapers have been known to blare erroneous headlines and this report of his death was the second one they had published, but at least this time it was true. 
     New Iberia, the newspaper of the Parish of St. Martin, Louisiana, ran a headline on September 20, 1862 that read: Glorious news! And then reported that the Confederacy had captured Washington, D.C. 
     In 1905, the Saint Paul (Minnesota) Globe warned that sea otters, elephants, kangaroos and giraffes were going to be extinct in the near future. Several newspapers published articles in 1910 that reported on the studies of one Professor Walter F. Wilcox, a statistician at Cornell University. He predicted that American women would stop having babies by 2015 and that by 2020, the country would be forced to import infants from France. 
     In 1912, the Salt Lake (Utah) Tribune published some ideas theorizing that Mars had canals created by some giant biomass and suggested they were caused by a giant eyeball growing up from the surface of the planet. They did admit that no evidence had been found to support the theory. 
     On April 15, 1912, headlines from the Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Daily Province, and the World reported the morning after the disaster that nobody had died on the Titanic. In reality, over 1,500 people died. 
     On November 11, 1918, the Chicago Herald Examiner declared there would be peace on earth after World War I ended. 
      On December 21, 1924, The New York Times claimed that Adolf Hitler was a changed man after a stint behind bars and his behavior during imprisonment convinced the authorities that, like his political organization, he was no longer to be feared. The article stated that it was believed he would retire to private life and return to Austria. 
     On November 3, 1948, the Chicago Tribune printed papers declaring Thomas Dewey had defeated Harry Truman in the presidential election. On August 17, 1977, The Guardian proclaimed that since Elvis was dead, rock was too.
     In December 1956, the New York Times (them again!) was in error when they ran an item claiming Fidel Castro was among the 40 revolutionaries killed by the Cuban government.
     In February 1897, the New York Times reported that Steinitz had died in a New York mental asylum. That was odd because at the time he was still in Moscow! 
     In a February 26, 1897, article the New York Journal reported that while the rumor of his death was erroneous, he was suffering from an incurable “ulceration of the brain.” 
     The article added that the cause of the rumor was probably due to the fact that he had a fainting spell. It also said he had forgotten all about chess and between attacks of delirium he was writing what he called essays on philosophy. 

     In reality, Steinitz had been committed to the Morosov Institute in Moscow and was released on March 12, 1897.  After his release he attempted to convince everyone he had been held against his will. In a public letter, Steinitz blamed his confinement on the angry uncle of a teenage Russian girl named Polly with whom he claimed he had a romantic affair. Steinitz alleged that Polly demanded that he divorce his wife, which he refused to do. Polly then wrote his wife and offered to buy Steinitz from her. All this lead to his detention in the Morosov clinic. 
     It was not until after he returned to New York after the London 1899 tournament that Steinitz was officially declared insane. On February 13, 1900 he was committed to Bellevue Hospital, but 4 days later he was transferred to the Ward's Island State Mental Asylum. Thanks to public efforts he was moved to the private River Crest Sanitarium in Astoria, New York. On April 7, 1900, he was released to the care of his family, but three weeks later he was recommitted to Bellevue Hospital where he died on August 12.