FREAK ACCIDENTS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 12332, 22 April 1938, Page 4

FREAK ACCIDENTS

INCIDENTS OF 1037 This is a story of true-life incidents which beats romance for freaks of fate. All over the world facts are now being collated to show posterity what sort of a year 1937 was. Apparently, it excelled in providing a crop of freakish accidents, and here are some of them gathered from the official archives. First, comes a “plum” from Blyth, Northumberland. A mother about to spank her six-year-old son raised her hand over the “target.” Just before the hand came down she remembered the old saying. She said it. “This hurts me more than it hurts you,” she declared. And it did. The hand never reached the “target.” She had dislocated her shoulder. Fatal Pat Canada provides a grimmer accident. Douglas Harper, a 10-year-old boy from Dundas County, Ontario, wanted to pat a horse. The tail lashed round his throat, forming a noose. His father found his son’s body hanging from the horse’s tall —dead. Crow Plays Last Trick Full marks for the most original accident can be collected by camerajnan A 1 Mingalone, of New York, who tried to take pictures while attached to a cluster of 30 hedge-hop-ping balloons. He was blown to an altitude of 2000 feet and only saved from being entirely blown away by a priest, Father Mullen, who followed him in a motor-car popping the balloons one by . one with a shotgun. The flying cameraman came eventually down unhurt. At Metz, France, a cow and a crow discovered what an electric contact is—to their cost. The cow rubbed itself against a metal pylon. At the same moment a crow alighted on the insulator with one claw on the iron support of the insulator and the other on the wire —so earthing the current. Cow and crow fell dead.

A Budapest fisherman, Stephen Make, was a victim of one of life’s bigger (ironies. He had threatened suicide because for weeks his catches had been miserable, but at last ran his boat into a shoal ,of fish, and landed by the score. Overjoyed he did not notice that he was overloading his boat. It capsized and he was drowned. Series of Disasters

Llndon, Utah, U.S.A., claims the most complicated accident. , Howard Harper, a motorist, burst a front tyre and hit a power line pole. The wires short-circuiting caused a fire in the petrol station near-by, which exploded. This short circuited more wires, which caused trouble in the power-house at Linden, a few miles away. Finally, the power line pole which had caused the original accident was discovered and replaced. But one of the repair gang forgot his car was in gear and when he pressed the self-starter to go home, the car backed into the pole and knocked it down again. This short-circuit set three houses on fire. Such was 1937.