Today: Headlines from April 19, 1925

Today 100 Years Ago: April 19, 1925

Life moved quickly in the spring of 1925. Jazz drifted out of New York basements, art-deco motifs crept across Parisian storefronts, and the radio dial crackled with a brand-new sense of possibility. Yet the newspapers of 18–20 April carried headlines that hinted at both hope and looming upheaval. Let’s leaf back through those pages together.

1. Berlin Holds Its Breath – Hindenburg Jumps Into the Presidential Race (18 April 1925)

[STORY_1_IMAGE] Field-Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, the white-moustached hero of Tannenberg, stunned Germany when he officially accepted the right-wing coalition’s invitation to run in the second round of the Weimar Republic’s presidential election. At 77, the old soldier was viewed by monarchists and conservatives as a living relic of imperial glory—exactly the image they hoped would smother the republic’s more progressive spirit.

Newspaper kiosks along the Kurfürstendamm sold out before noon as Berliners argued whether Hindenburg would steady the fragile democracy or steer it back toward authoritarianism. The Social Democrats warned that wrapping the nation in nostalgia would not pay war-reparation bills or curb the hyper-inflation that had only recently cooled.

Fast-forward to 2025: Europe again wrestles with nostalgia-driven politics. We watch holographic rallies and algorithm-tuned push notifications do the job of the old newsboy—but the core question feels eerily familiar: can a charismatic “strong man” really make a complex society feel simple again?

2. Patriots’ Day on the Pavement – Boston Marathon Draws a Record Field (20 April 1925)

[STORY_2_IMAGE] Just after midday, a starter’s pistol cracked the cool New England air in Hopkinton, and 104 men in cotton singlets surged down the dirt road toward Boston. It was the 29th Boston Marathon—26 miles, 385 yards of hills, horse carts, and cheering factory workers leaning out of second-story windows.

Spectators marveled at the front-runner’s time: a whisker under 2 hours 35 minutes, flirting with the world best of the day. Three-time champion Clarence DeMar fought shoulder-to-shoulder with a plucky Canadian newcomer, and papers later joked that the race was “decided by the width of a bicycle tire.” The finish on Exeter Street turned into an impromptu picnic; rowdy college students formed a human arch for every exhausted finisher.

Comparing 1925 to 2025, today’s elite marathoners are roughly 30 minutes faster, thanks to carbon-fiber plates, biometric analytics, and asphalt surfaces that would have looked like polished marble to those 1920s work boots. Yet the itch to lace up and test the limits of flesh and will? That remains gloriously unchanged.