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Show CEILING OF TAUMDE PALACE FALLS, DOING' IMMENSE DAMAGE ST. PETERSBURG, March 15. The ceiling of the hall in the Tauride palace, pal-ace, where the lower house of Parliament, Parlia-ment, meets, collapsed. at 6 o'clock this morning and caused widespread wreckage wreck-age among the seats below. Though many rumors were circulated to the effect that. the falling of the ceiling ceil-ing was the result of a plot to interfere inter-fere with the meeting of Parliament, its purely accidental character- was clearly established. An examination showed that the nails and other fastenings fasten-ings holding the ceiling to the rafters bad not been replaced since the time of Catherine II, and broke under the extra weight of the new decorations.' The aggregate weight of the ceiling material -was so. great that in its fall it twisted the massive bronze electroliers electro-liers in such a way as to indicate that a terrible catastrophe would have resulted re-sulted .had the fall occurred a few hours later, during the session of the house. |