Word: doumer
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Long years ago the future President Paul Doumer attended the wedding of the future dean of Paris cameramen. Last week it came about that bearded Photographer Piston was standing with his flashlight upraised, his camera trained on the patriarchal President at the precise instant when a tall, burly Russian bounded forward and fired point-blank at M. Doumer with a Colt pistol. Instantly dropping his flashlight, Photographer Piston wielded his camera like a club, beating the assassin over the head, stunning him momentarily-and throwing away the chance to make a Picture of the Century...
...strange, sardonic sense the tragedy dated back to a day last May, the day on which Paul Doumer was elected President, a triumph which broke the heart of his far more famed rival and onetime friend, Aristide Briand. On that day victorious President-Elect Paul Doumer said: "It is strange how often the number 13 has arisen to the surface in my long political life. Not only have I just been elected 13th President of France on the 13th day of May, but the last two digits of this year 1931 make 13 when reversed...
...Friday of M. Doumer's assassination events moved thus...
...year-old President, who lost four of his five sons in the War, left his Elysee Palace to sponsor a sale of books by French War Veterans. In the limousine beside ancient M. Doumer rode alert, bristle-bearded Novelist Claude Farrère, President de la Société des Ecrivains Combattants who were staging their "War Veterans' Book Afternoon" in the nearby building of the Rothschild Foundation. Book sales were proceeding briskly and Novelist Farrère's wife Henriette had just succeeded in selling a third book by her husband to the brawny Russian...
Meanwhile, Pope Pius XI, strolling in the Vatican Garden, had heard the news, telegraphed his hope that President Doumer would recover "with God's help and the aid of science...