Tragedy
Burned to Death.
The shocking instances of females having been burnt to death renders the
knowledge of a discovery lately published by Sir Richard Philips, in the
Monthly Magazine, for their total prevention, of the highest consequence.
He deduces for the principal of the ascention of flame that ladies ought
to lay down as soon as they discover their clothes on fire; that the progress
of the flame will by that means be instantly checked and may be easily and
deliberately extinguished without any fatal injury, as usual, to the head,
face, bosom and throat. He proves his principle by the following experiment;
he took two slips of printed cotton, a yard long, and on lighting one of
them at the lower end, holding it perpendicular, it was consumed to a cinder
in a fifth of a minute, and the volume of flame was so great as to rise
two feet. He then lighted an exactly similar piece of cotton and laid it
horizontally on a pair of tongs, so as to be hollow, and in this situation
it was five minutes burning, and the flame at no one time ascended an inch
in height, and might have been extinguished by the thumb or finger. This
plain and easy experiment ought to be read in the presence of the females
of every family.
- The Weekly Messenger, Boston, Nov 12, 1813.
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AN APRIL FOOL JOKE WITH A SAD ENDING -
The Chicago Post says:
A large party of gentlemen were enjoying themselves in a saloon, when one
of them said that he would like to make an April fool of his brother, who
was not then present. A method was devised at once, and a man was sent to
inform the absentee that his brother had been killed in an affray, and was
lying in the saloon. Of course the story was told in a very pathetic manner.
When he arrived at the saloon his brother was lying on the counter with
a red scarf tied closely round his neck. he thought the red scarf was blood,
certainly, and in a terrible fit of excitement he demanded the person who
had slain his brother. Here the joke should have been explained, but was
carried a little to far. Somebody who appreciated the fun immediately pointed
to a man as the guilty party. In a moment the enraged brother drew a revolver
and shot him.
- Sacramento Daily Union, May 21, 1864
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Died.
In Quincy, (Mass.) Miss Caroline Matilda Smith, aged 16.-A few evenings
before her death, while sitting at a window, a person unobserved touched
her arm suddenly and caused her to start. Her involuntary effort was so
great as to cause a rupture of a blood vessel, which terminated her life.
-National Gazette, Philadelphia, May 15, 1824
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A Child's Premonition of Death. - A singular coincidence, to use no stronger
term, occurred a week or two ago in Wilmington, Delaware. Without any apparent
cause therefor, and while gazing upward into the sky, a little three year
old child, the death of whose mother had committed her to its grandfather,
paused in its seeming contemplation of things above, and turning to its
grandparents remarked in its childish pratter: "Dranpa, my mamma is
up yonder in the sky, and I'se going to see her next week." Then turning
and entering the house the child caught the grandmother by the hand and
asked her if she would not go with it. "Where to?" inquired the
lady, and back came the answer, "To my mamma in heaven." The following
Friday the child was seized with membranous croup, the violence of the attack
of which baffled all human skill, and on the first day of the next week
the child died.
- The Coos Bay News, Empire City, Oregon, Nov 24, 1875.
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The French Revolution.--So little was life valued at that dreadful epoch,
that the jailor of the Abbey, having to send twenty-eight persons to the
scaffold, only twenty-seven answered to their names. "Gentlemen, (said
he,) I have twenty-eight on my list, and I cannot go without them.--Here
are only twenty-seven; arrange it as you like, but my number must be completed."
One of the prisoners who had been tried, instantly said: "Well a day
sooner or later is no matter; I will make up the number." He did so
and was guillotined.
- Bellows Falls (Vt.) Intelligencer, April 25, 1825
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