Today: Headlines from April 20, 1925

Today 100 Years Ago: A Window on 20 April 1925

Time-travel with me, dear readers, to an age of straw boaters, telegrams and steam locomotives. While we in 2025 livestream marathons on smartwatches and scroll election news in augmented reality, the world of 1925 pulsed to a very different—but no less thrilling—beat. Here are three stories that dominated front pages exactly a century ago.

1. Runners Rule Patriots’ Day: The 29th Boston Marathon

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Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts meant only one thing in 1925: 26 miles of grit on the hilly road from Hopkinton to Boston. Newspapers reported that more than 125 starters—an eye-popping record—took off at noon sharp. Crowds three-deep lined the route, waving American flags and shouting encouragement in half a dozen languages; Boston’s immigrant communities claimed the race as their own annual carnival.

Highlights pulled from the afternoon editions:

• A blistering pace: the leaders blasted through the 20-mile mark in under 1 hr 54 min—unthinkable speed just a decade earlier.

• Heat worries: Temperatures flirted with 70 °F (21 °C). Doctors on bicycles handed out salt pills, an innovation at the time.

• A new course record: The winner crashed through the Boylston Street tape in 2 h 29 m 23 s, trimming more than a minute off the old mark.

2025 Lens

Today’s elite finish more than 15 minutes quicker, rocking carbon-fiber shoes and ingesting scientific gel packs. But that 1925 record was set in leather-soled flats on rough asphalt—an astonishing testament to human endurance.

2. Berlin Holds Its Breath: Germany’s Presidential Cliff-hanger

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Across the Atlantic, Germany’s fledgling Weimar Republic was six days away from its historic presidential runoff (scheduled 26 April). On this day in 1925, Berlin crackled with rumors and political theater:

• Campaign crescendo: Conservative ex-Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg barnstormed provincial towns, vowing “order above all.” Centrist papers worried aloud that a Hindenburg victory risked dragging the republic back toward militarism.

• Last-minute alliances: Catholic Centre and Social Democrats huddled in smoke-filled cafés, debating whether to rally around Chancellor Wilhelm Marx as the single pro-republic candidate. Headlines screamed “United Front or Bust!”

• Street politics: Parades, brass bands, and pamphlet showers clogged Unter den Linden. Police counted 14 sizable demonstrations in a single afternoon.

2025 Lens

One hundred years later, Germany still votes for its head of state—now a mostly ceremonial post—and does so online as well as in person. But the 1925 contest marked Europe’s first direct, popular election of a president. In an age of algorithm-powered campaigns, it’s striking to recall a time when persuasion meant soapboxes and hand-pressed leaflets.

3. Paris Paints the Future: Art Déco Expo Nears Showtime

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If Boston embodied athletic muscle and Berlin political nerves, Paris was all about style. With only eight days left before opening night, crews swarmed the banks of the Seine to finish the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes—the blockbuster fair that would coin the term Art Déco.

• Designers in action: Maurice Dufrêne fussed over a chrome-and-lacquer dining set; René Lalique personally tweaked a 10-foot glass fountain destined to stop visitors in their tracks.

• Technicolor Paris: Electric bulbs bathed the Grand Palais in soft amber for the first full lighting rehearsal on 20 April—spectators gasped at the “palace of fire.”

• Global stakes: 20 nations, from Japan to Argentina, rushed to out-dazzle one another. The United States pavilion—rising jazzily in steel and terracotta—looked nothing like the neoclassical U.S. entries of earlier world fairs.

2025 Lens

We still chase the new, but the 2025 design world worships at the altar of sustainability. Bioplastics and circular manufacturing rule Milan and Shenzhen. Yet many of today’s sleek lines trace their ancestry straight to the geometric audacity finalized on this very April day in 1925.

There you have it: endurance, democracy, and design—all captured on a single spring day a century ago. History never travels in straight lines, but it certainly loves a good April 20th.