Putnam patriot., 1908-09-11
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 Putnam, Conn.
PECULIAR ACCIDENTS.
The "lrony of Life" Illustrated h
 Stories of Falls.

Stories of Falls.
 The irony of life. was strikingiy illustrated recently iu the news of a rustic who slipped from , SIX earred gate and broke his neck and of an Italfan aeronaut who fell l.oo0 feet with his collapsed balloon with no worse result than sprained ankle.
 \ FrenchWoman. Mme. Morel. and her daughter. while climbing in the Alps, near ZeTmatt. fel Il distance of I.2eo feet, not much less than Il quar- ter of mie and. although the mother was killed on the spot, her daughter escaped with few bruises Mir Whymper. the famous mountaineer, had q similarly miraculous deiiveranee from what seemed to be certain death when scaling the Matterhorn. Losing his footing he fell from rock to rock to the bottom of d precipitous gully. 100 yards in depth. only to recover his feet with no worse damage than Il badly cut head And NJ. rarville, a French writer. tells the story of an East Indian living in the island Of Oghin whe fell over precipiee 1000 feet deep with no more serious con sequence than good shaking. his fall being broken hy the dense vegetation which grew at the foot of the cliff.
 While climbing Il waterworks tower 24o feet high in Chicago steeple jack dislodged loose stone and was precipitated To the ground from q height of l15 feet, fortunately strik- ing telegraph wires forty feet above the street and thus breaking his fall. The spectators gasped with horror as they saw tue nan drop swiftly to de struetion rush WIS made to pick up his shattered remains only 10 dis cover that lie was practically nn harmed Not q bone was broken. and a week later he was walking about as if uathius had happened.
 More remarkable and indeed al most incredible was the experience Of Charles Wapleet vixen he was making parachute descent in Venezuela Al height of 3.Ga0 feet Woolcot flung himself off his balloon into space when. to the horror of the thousands of enlookerss the parachute failed to open The mnn dropped like d stone with terrible speed until. when about 2ta feet from the earth. the parachute flew open and at once collapsed He Mas dashed 10 The ground. his right thig'l ard hip were broken. both ankles and knees were badly crushed. and his spiaal column was disloeaied. and yet. after T year slent in hospital. Woalcot was restored to saundness of limb aft CT surely the most terrible adventure ef which any man has lived to tell the story.
 But it Is in the history of ballooning that one encounters the most remark able cases of sensational drops from the clouds. When Mir Wise. famous aeronau, Of the early nineteenth cen tury. was ouce making an ascent his balloon exploded at an altitude of l3.- uS feet and began to drop swiftly to the earth. more than couple of miles below. The descent at first was rapid" Mir. Wise writes. and accom- panied ty fearful moaning noise caused by air rushing through the net- work and the gas escaping from above In another moment felt s slight shock. and looking nP to see what caused 1t. | discovered that the balloon was cant- ing over. being nicely doubled in. the lower half into the upper.s
 The balloon had. in fact. formed it- self into parachute and. oscillating wildly. continued its descent until il struck the earth violently. throwing the aeronaut ten yards out of the car
 The ear had turned bottom upward and there stocd.r says Mir. Wise. Neongratnlating myself and the per spiration rolling down my forehead in profusion- '-St Louis Post Dispatch. p1.ANH nNEn0