From WNYC Studios.

I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Monday, July 8th.

There's a weird convergence this morning between this being a very special day for WNYC and the lead story right now in

national politics. Today, if you haven't heard yet, is WNYC's 100th birthday. But the birthday made me

curious, what was in the news on July 8th, 1924? So I pulled up the front page of that day's

New York Times. And are you ready for this headline?

Maddo below Smith on 86th ballot. Maddo below Smith on 86th ballot. What does that mean? Well, the Democratic Party

was having an open convention at Madison Square Garden to nominate their

presidential candidate for the 1924 election. And they had gone through 86 ballots so far, and no candidate

had yet gotten a majority of the delegates. Wow. The two leaders at that point were those two names,

the governor of New York, Al Smith,

and William Madoo, I don't even know if I'm saying the name right,

who had been Treasury Secretary under President Woodrow Wilson.

As of July 8th, 1924, no nominee yet.

That night, as WNYC was signing on to the airwaves for the first time,

the first minute was 8.54 p.m. That night, there were even fights in the streets of New York

among some passionate and rowdy delegates. Finally, the next day, day 16 of the convention,

of course these days they're just four-day

television commercials. That was day 16 of the convention. And on the 1003rd ballot, they nominated

neither Maddo nor Al Smith, but rather what they call a compromise candidate, John W. Davis,

who, spoiler alert, went on to

...