MANY NEW WONDERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23009, 9 April 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

MANY NEW WONDERS

Strange Are Happening In the World Ei)ery Day THIS is the strangest world that ever was, and what makes it stranger is that everybody knows in a twinkling the strange things that happen. Not long ago a six-year-old boy was playing in a street in Prague when a inre wrapped itself round him, lifted (,iin up into a tree 60ft. high and left him there, like Jack in the Beanstalk. A taximan'"saw him, got him down ind took him to hospital, where ho teas found to be much more frightened than hurt, and no damage had been floiie except a cut about his right eye. A Double Miracle When an explanation of the small boy's involuntary Peter Pan flight was sought it came out that he had been caught up bv a wire attached to an aeroplane.. The wire did nflt rightly belong to the aeroplane, but to another from which it was being unwound on the ground, while the moving aero pi fine was starting from tho aerodrome. The moving aeroplane accidentally caught it up and trailed it behind, where it looped itself round tho boy. It left both wire and boy in tho tree, jrithout anybody in tho aeroplane realis-

ing what had happened, and the acciV dent seems to have escaped being a much worso one by a double miracle, because while the wire was still wrapped round the boy in tho tree its dangling end touched an electric cable but tho boy received no shock. This seems such a strange thing that wo can hardly believe it, but we were told by a friend of an experience a good many years ago which was almost similar. He was a passenger in a captive balloon at Putney, near London, on a boat race day, the object of which was to take an aerial photograph of the | start and progress of the race. | By some mishap the rope holding the balloon sailed away, to land ultimately soveral miles away. But the end of the long trailing rope, as the balloon began to move away from Putney wrapped itself round a hansom cabman, half lifted him from the seat of his cab and then dropped him! "Out of the Air" This was only one of the adventures which befell tno captive balloon and its occupants, one of whom vas Robert Spencer, th'e parachutist. Something strange is always happfening, and while of old it used to be said there was always something new out of Africa, we find nowadays that something new is always coming out of the air. It may bo an aeroplane descending on a chimney, or blocking up a town street; and we breathe a sigh k of relief if we hoar that no great damage is done. •

Every day it seems that the aeroplane perforins new wonders. The price paid for them is often heavy and hard to be borne, but there are redeeming stories to be told of. the daring and perils of the argonauts of the air, as when th/sy rescue some of their fraternity from perils of the desert, the sea or the frozen ocean.