[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

(SNIP)

IOW: What are the top 5 headlines coming off the news tickers and lithograms for November, 1911, for each of 5 different world cities?

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Answer 56c

Headlines from the London Times, November 1911

1. Land race for South Pole a close one

Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen appears to have the lead in a race against Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

Amundsen, the first to complete the Northwest Passage by surface ship, five years ago, departed from the shore of the Ross Sea earlier in the year to establish several supply camps. The most recent effort began Oct. 19, and is expected to allow Amundsen to reach the pole, via dog-sled.

Capt. Scott got a later start, after some confusion about Amundsen's intentions. Compounding the problems faced by the effort sponsored by the Royal Geographic Society was the unexpected discovery of an extensive set of ruins, located along Scott's route, just south of the Beardmore Glacier.

The British party first left the Antarctic Ice Barrier and made landfall on the continent proper, at the Beardmore Glacier, and discovered the ruins several days later, after they'd left the rugged region. Capt. Scott chose to delay his journey to the pole so as to make an initial survey of the ruins, virtually assuring the Norwegian party will reach the pole, first.

2. Gaelic Brotherhood separatists threaten shipping

Members of the Gaelic Brotherhood of Eirann and Alba demanded that the parliaments of the Celtic Federacy cut all ties with the British Empire and declare independence, and threatened attacks on British shipping if they refused.

The radical group formed as an offshoot of the Celtic Autonomy movement that eventually led to the creation of the Celtic Federacy as a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Those dissatisfied with the compromise that created the Celtic Federacy, rather than an independent Celtic state, have periodically engaged in bombings and shootings in the years since its founding.

The Gaelic Brotherhood has been labeled an "illegal insurgency" by the Home Office, which dismisses it as a credible threat to the Commonwealth, but cautions the group may engage in isolated acts of political violence.

3. Heiress announces plan to circumnavigate world via dirigible

Cecily Wedgewood, daughter of the Marquess of Bainbright and heir to the family fortune, announced the commission of a Bustard-class transport dirigible, with modifications intended to allow her to circumnavigate the world.

The Royal Navy regularly posts dirigibles throughout the Empire, and uses them as reconnaissance and resupply in concert with land and sea forces, but no airship has ever completed a circumnavigation of the planet.

The French airship, Joyeuse Brise, made sucn an effort, five years ago, and was accompanied by several tender airships. The French had to turn back to California after fuel ran low in the face of contrary winds over the north Pacific.

Dame Wedgewood says she intends to try a more southerly route, even though the trip across the South Pacific would require a long voyage across open ocean between the Hawaiian Islands and his majesty's colonies in either Australia or India.

Moreover, large stretches of the supposedly empty southern Pacific remain unexplored, and may pose unexpected hazards.

However, Dame Wedgewood has said advances in dirigible technology make the trip more plausible than even five years ago, and expressed confidence that the Bustard-class dirigible (the largest class of airships in the world) when combined with other British technological advances, would succeed where the French effort failed.

4. Mechanical Intelligence project reports setback

Efforts to create an advanced Babbage engine that could model human intelligence suffered a setback when the system performed less well than expected.

Researchers and Babbage engineers at Cambridge have spent nearly two decades in the creation and refinement of the system, designed to permit strategic analyses without human biases, on behalf of the Royal Navy. The project reported a breakthrough, last year, when the system successfully held a conversation for 53 minutes with a human being.

The system also reportedly provided what were reported as a number of analyses described as "insightful" by sources in the Royal Navy, but the exact nature of which remain classified as "Most Secret."

Based on the advances, the Royal Navy authorized the Cambridge savants to introduce the new system to one of three Advanced Strategy Engines at the Royal Navy College, in Greenwich, which was placed in isolation from the other two. Although no one spoke publicly about the exercise, sources from the Royal Navy and within Cambridge reported results described as "disappointing."

The Cambridge dons have reportedly requested that the Royal Navy allow a telegraphic connection between the university system, and the one in Greenwich, to allow them to investigate possible differences in the two engines that may explain the disparate results.

An extensive telegraphic network already connects government offices, military facilities and universities, throughout the United Kingdom. Royal Navy engineers deliberately disconnected the engine that held the new system from that network, as a way to create a controlled environment for the trial.

5. Drain Gang violence extends to Whitechapel

Violent criminal gangs who hide within London's extensive system of storm drains and other underground structures have reportedly spread to Whitechapel, Scotland Yard reports.

Originally confined to poorest and most desperate sections of Limehouse, the gangs first appeared when vagrants took to the large storm drains during the cold winter months, and began to fight for control. For some years, repair crews have been accompanied by police and private guards when making repairs to the infested sections.

Despite best efforts by police to eliminate the drain gangs, and Christian temperance and other social services organizations to provide more wholesome shelter, the pernicious problem continues.

Recently, the Scotland Yard Street Violence Section reported that one of the largest gangs, the Bluefields Underboys, had broken up in a violent dispute about leadership. The metropolitan police had hoped to wrest away control of the storm drains used by the gang, in light of the dispute, and reportedly made considerable inroads.

However, it appears a violent splinter faction consisting of several dozen former members of the Bluefields Underboys have moved west to drains somewhere beneath Whitechapel. Scotland Yard reports it became aware of the move when violence near Dorset Street suddenly increased.