This Week 100 Years Ago: Headlines from 05 8, 2025
Time-Travel Tuesday – Rewinding to the Second Week of May 1925
A century ago, the world was humming with modernist dreams, scientific controversy, and colonial reshuffles. Step into the spring of 1925, where Paris dazzled with futuristic design, a quiet town in Tennessee braced for a courtroom storm, and the Mediterranean island of Cyprus received a new flag overhead.
1️⃣ Paris Throws Open the Gates to the Future – The Art Deco Expo (Opened 28 April 1925, in full swing this week)
[STORY_1_IMAGE]
The banks of the Seine were electric. From the flamboyant gilded doors of the Grand Palais to sleek pavilions clad in zig-zag geometry, the freshly opened Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes served as a living catalogue of what we now call Art Deco. Visitors queued beneath brilliant billboards, marveling at lacquered furniture, chrome-trimmed automobiles, and couture gowns shimmering with glass beads.
• 15,000 exhibitors from 20+ nations battled to prove that luxury and machine-age efficiency could coexist. • The Soviet pavilion—an asymmetrical red-and-white construct—stole headlines for its radical glass tower. • American buyers quietly filled order books, ready to ship streamlined style back across the Atlantic.
🕶️ 2025 Lens: Today we swipe through design trends on touchscreens, yet the 1925 expo reminds us that seeing and touching still matter. The show’s mix of craftsmanship and tech foreshadowed our own obsession with devices that must feel as good as they function.
2️⃣ A Biology Lesson Turns Criminal – John T. Scopes Arrested (Dayton, Tennessee, 5 May 1925)
[STORY_2_IMAGE]
High-school substitute John T. Scopes probably didn’t expect fame when he scribbled Darwin’s evolutionary tree on the chalkboard, but the newly-minted Butler Act had outlawed just that. On 5 May, Dayton’s sheriff formally arrested Scopes, igniting what would become the “Monkey Trial.”
• Local boosters secretly welcomed the coming media circus—hotels already printing flyers for visiting reporters. • William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow began warming their rhetorical engines for a courtroom clash over faith, science, and the soul of modern America. • Radios—still a novelty—would soon beam live coverage nationwide, previewing the 24/7 news cycle we now take for granted.
🔬 2025 Lens: Gene-editing startups advertise CRISPR vacations and AI tutors break down quantum theory for kids. Yet debates over science curricula still rage, proving that knowledge may advance faster than consensus.
3️⃣ A New Flag over the Levant – Cyprus Becomes a British Crown Colony (1 May 1925)
[STORY_3_IMAGE]
Under a fierce Mediterranean sun, British officials raised the Union Jack above Nicosia’s Government House, finalizing Cyprus’s shift from protectorate to Crown Colony. For Cypriots, it was another chapter in a long saga of empires:
• Greek-speaking majority pressed harder for enosis (union with Greece), while Turkish Cypriots worried about marginalization. • London’s change in status tightened administrative control but also promised new public-works funds and expanded schooling—carrots offsetting the imperial stick. • The island’s strategic value, astride Suez routes, made it a jewel every admiral coveted.
🌍 2025 Lens: A hundred years later, Cyprus is an EU member still grappling with north-south partitions. The events of 1925 remind us how colonial paperwork can echo for generations.
Closing Thoughts
May 1925 flickered with bold design, ideological showdowns, and imperial maneuvers—threads that still weave through 2025 headlines. History might not repeat, but it sure likes to remix. Same week next year? See you in the time machine!