The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-04-13
NITRO-GLYCERINE
Some Singular Stories Concerning Its Ire
mendous Explosive Force.


Some Singular Stories Concerning Its Ire
mendous Explosive Force.
New York Special.
One of my friends in this conference had
been an eminent contractor, and something
was said about the Irish making dynamite
war on England, on which this gentleman
remarked Il have had a good deal to dc
with nitro-glycerine, | did some important
government work, such as the making OF
breakwaterS, where the rock was brought to
me in large pieces, and we had to blow it up,
and used nitro-glycerine for that purpose. 1t
is the most destructive thing you can con-
ceive Of A little cartridge of it as thick as
the end of a musket barrel, dropped to the
bottom of an oil well will shatter the most
tremendous primitive rock. You can take q
piece of it half as big as your hand, and it
will blow a rock as big as this room in
which we are sitting all to flinders. l can
tell you of a very singular property about
nitro-glycerine. On one occasion an ordi-
nance was passed in certain city where
was doing public work imposing a penalty OF
$500 for bringing nitro -glycerine within the
city limits | had to have it, so | told my
foreman to put that glycerine under my
table, at which l sat writing. As it is ex-
ploded by conclusion, you may imagine that
fer a few days | was little skittish. There
was enough glycerine there concealed by that
table-Cloth to have blown up half dozen
blocks of that CITY, People used to come into
my room, sit few minutes, and suddenly
one or more would put their hands to their
head and complain of headache. Not being
subject to headaches myself, L could not
understand it. | suppose that from one-half
to three fourths of all my visitors who sat
with me more than ten minutes would have
those headaches. One day a man came into
my Office who had been blowing out oil-wells
in Pennsylvania He sat there fifteen min
utes and suddenly said, Why l have a
headache; you must have nitro-glycerine
here oh, no. said /, with q smile. Yes,
said he. this is a nitro-glycerine headache.
| think smell it, too He began to sniff
his nose. There is very slight odor, hardly
perceptible in the stuff. and it looks like a
box OF lard With this my visitor lifted
the tabe-coth and said, Have you got it
there? pointing to the boxes. Yes said
1, with a laugh, that is nitro-glycerine.
Well said he, it gives the headache to
large proportion of people who sit near
it,"
"Did you have any ACCIDENT" said l.
mo, l did not; but fellow-contractor
who was doing some work in Canada, was
driven out of that country by an accident
that happened to him in q very simple way.
He had been using nitro-g ycerine, and it IS
supposed that some of it got spilled on the
tire of wagon, which was left unmoved for
some time. One day he hitched horse to
the wagon and started to drive it off. and
then that small amount of stuff adhering to
the tire blew up as the wheels moved and
really destroyed two-thirds of that little
town. The people around we're killed, the
hotel was blown to pieces, two or three blocks
were devastated, and my associate was I'M
able to do any contracting work in Canada.
He hastily sold what he left there to a ma
tive and crossed the river and came away,
otherwise they would have sued him for all
the DAMAGE done to that town.