Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1913-07-18
WILD WIND ANTICS
The Havoc That May Come When
 a Tornado Breaks Loose.
STORMS PLAY QUEER FRANKS
Houses Have Been Carried Bodily Into the Air and Exploded, and Half a
 Building Has Been Swept Away, While the Rest Remained Unharmed.

the Air and Exploded, and Half a l Building Has Been Swept Away,
 While the Rest Remained Unharmed. The weather bureau at Washington ,as been collecting statistics and facts about cyclones and tornadoeS for many years, and the experts have succeeded in securing considerable valuable data about the big winds; but, after all, the freaks of the storm are the things that give 1t special interest, and if all these were properly classified some remarka ble reading would be furnished. Every visitation of tornado adds to this val uable storehouse of queer freaks.
 It is not uncommon for the whirling wind to cut house in half, demolish ing one side and leaving the other un disturbed This happened in an Iowa tornado, and the part that was left in tact was so little disturbed that the clock on the mantel continued ticking. as if nothing had happened.
 In the Texas town of Sherman, which was visited by a tornado in 1896. two houses were picked up and carried into the air, where they ex- ploded. Every one in them was severe ly injured except q baby, which did not receive so much as scratch. A man milking q cow in a shed saw the COW and shed carried up in the air, but lie was not so much as touched. Not a drop of the milk in his pail was spilled or disturbed.
 In the St. Louis tornado of the same year carpet in the parlor Of one house was pulled up by the twister and car ried away few hundred yards with out so much as q rent being torn in it. The tacks had been pulled up as neatly as if extracted by a careful carpet layer.
 In another house the bedclothing and mattress were lifted from the bed, and the bedstead was left intact. A resi- dent was carried through the roof of another house with the bed and drop. ped q quarter of a mile away without injury. The mattress saved him in the fall, and he picked himself up in a va cant lot to dress without knowing ex. actly what had happened to him.
 The "twisters" have been known to pull nails out of shingles and then go on to pick up a chimney bodily and carry it through the air. In Kansas one picked up buggy. andlanded it in the branches of tree. At another time it ripped the harness completely off a horse and left horse, buggy and man uninjured. In Louisville, in 1890, a tornado carried the roof off house and pulled child from the mothers arms and carried 1t safely to another house six blocks away.
 But these are merely among the harmless freaks of the big wind. There are others more heartrend;ng It has dismembered human beings, tearing arms and legs from the body, and twisted the hair of women into ropes. In Kansas it drove piece of scantling six inches square through the body of a hog At another time it blew in the | door of farmers house and carried the owner away on the door, to drop l him in the branches of a tree. The tornado did not hurt him, but he broke his neck falling from the tree to the ground
 No one has succeeded in measuring the full force of a tornado. but it Is known to travel at the rate of POO miles and more an hour.
 ] Tornadoes are exciting more general attention than formerly because of the greater number of towns and villages 1 located in the tornado belt Each sue cessive one is more dangerous than it's predecessors because it is apt to find more human material to destroy. For. merly it might travel half the length of continent without finding anything in it's path to destroy except grass. trees and occasionally the crops of solitary farmer. Today. if it followed the same route. it might pass over a dozen villages and towns.
 The only thing that can possibly break the force of tornado is range of mountains. It may create wild havoc among the trees and powders of mountain, but 1t cannot carry the mountain itself away. It will uproot l giant forest trees, suck the water from wells and streams, twist and demolish iron bridges and carry up houses. but the mountains are proof against the mighty force of the wind.
 1 Until we know how to control the l tornado or find some means of baffling 1t, its menacing danger must always be source of considerable uneasiness in the great plain sections of the coun. try. But, like earthquakes. Che tor nado and cyclone do not come every year, and sometimes they defer their visit for a decade or so. for which we may be thankful.-George B. Walsh in Harper's Weekly.