OCR Text |
Show QUEER ACCIDENTS. ! t Seme of the Strange Mishaps That Occurred the Past Year. .(.Answers.) The hackneyed saying about truth being stranger than fiction is constantly constant-ly brought to mind by incidents of everyday life. Things happen which no novelist would dare invent, and lives are lost in the most wildly improbable im-probable fashion. Take the following as an example: A Great Western . train was running between Bristol and London when an extraordinary tragedy took place in a third-class carriage. A woman trving to open a bottle of whisky broke the cork. Having no corkscrew she tried to force the cork into the bottle with her thumb. The bottle exploded, and a jagged splinter of glass gashed her thigh, cutting an artery. She bird to death in a few minutes. Another woman, wife of a miner at a place called Cheboygan. Mich., lost her life in even stranger fashion. Her 7-year-old boy had played truant from school, and when he came home sbe, remembering the old' proverb tbout sparing the rod, chastised him with a strap. At the very first blow there was a fearful explosion. The boy was killed kill-ed instantly, and his mother received injuries from which she did not recover. re-cover. Investigation proved that die nicie ienow naa stolen a dynamite cap and stowed it in one of his trousers' pockets. The blow from the trap had exploded it. One does not exnect to lose one's life through a visit to the dentist. Ytt such a case happened in August last. A working man went to the dentist to have an aching grinder extracted. The tooth was an obstinate one, and in trying try-ing to get a good grip of it with his forceps the dentist forced his patient's head back further than usual. Th?re was a sudden crack, and the man collapsed. col-lapsed. Horror stricken, the dentist realized that in forcing' back the hc;id he had broken his patient's neck. Strange things happen in the streets. One day in September last a l-.ose, harnessed to a van, pulled up suddenly in the middle of the main thoroughfare on the south side of Trafalgar square and stood 11 there as if rooted to the spot. Everything possible was done to induce the animal to proceed, but it flatly refused to budge. A huge crowd collected, and traffic became absolutely blocked. For two hours and a half by the clock that horse remained where he stood. Even when the harness was taken off and a dozen men tried co lilt him away he refused to surrender. At last the verdict went forth that he must die, and, a gun being brought, he was shot. The police say that the incident in-cident is nnione in the historv of Lon don streets. A much more terrible accident was witnessed in Sloane square one Sunday night in the same month. The ccck of the oetrol tank of a London motor omnibus broke off. The bus wag s'.op-ped s'.op-ped and the driver got down and plugged plug-ged the hole with his thumb, whilo the conductor went back with a lamp to look for the plug. When he got back the driver was still holding on to the leak, but by this time was soaked soak-ed with petrol. The conductor paused to ask a lady passenger to get off. Suddenly Sud-denly there was a flash and a report, and the omnibus burst into flames. Next instant the horrible sight was seen of the driver all ablaze runr.'n up the street, a living torch. Men ran to the rescue and flung coats ovov him. But it was too late. He died or. his injuries. What had happened was this: The escaping petrol had run away in a stream down the gutter. A passer-by had dropped a match or cigarette end, and the inflammable liquid had burst into flame, and the fire had run back up the gutter to the bus, and thus set fire to the unfortunate driver. ' Ahd it will suffice if we barely mention men-tion the terrible caisson aeeidmt at Blackfriars, London, the details of which will be fresh in the minds of most as one of the most odd, as well as terrible, which have occurred in 1907. |