We were born 100 years too late. In the Times' "TimesMachine," you can read about the glorious life you might have been living in 1909, when, on this day, the paper featured a Senator's attack on a Times reporter and the election of President Taft's son into Skull and Bones.

This is a newspaper we want to read. Here's the gripping account of Sen. Joseph Bailey's vicious assault, in a corridor of the U.S. Capitol's Senate wing, on Timesman W.S. Manning—written in the third person, unbylined, but obviously by Manning himself:

We're not sure, but it looks like Manning survived the attack and went on to write a book called Hints and Encouragements for Profitable Fruit Growing.

The same day's paper reported on the election of Robert A. Taft, the son of then-President William Howard Taft, into the Skull and Bones at Yale, which sounds suspiciously like gossip that people might actually be interested in! Glad the Times outgrew that sort of juvenalia: "Young Taft was notified of his election by a slap between the shoulders by Allen Knots of Huntington, N.Y."

Also there's this: "Turkey Asks Jews to Come; Offers to Confer Full Citizenship Upon Immigrants on Arrival." How'd that turn out?

A century of progress later, we get A1 stories on hugging.

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