FREAK ACCIDENTS IN 1948 FROM ALL OVER WORLD

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 46, 26 January 1949, Page 4

FREAK ACCIDENTS IN 1948 FROM ALL OVER WORLD

Many people were killed or seriously injured in freak accidents in 1948. Here are some taken from casualty reports from all over the world. ENGLAND: West London schoolboy Michael Cox, playing hide and. seek, hid in a hollow tree, but could not get out. Police and firemen freed him with crowbars. Michael escaped with shock. ' - , A gale blew William Bousfield, schoolboy, over cliff-top at Whitby, Yorkshire, to a rocky ledge 200 .feet, below. r . A rowing boat went out to recover the body, but found Bousfield with only a cut forehead. U.S.A.: James Drager, of New York, laid a lighted cigarette on an ash tray. It exploded a bullet which had been left in the tray, shot Drager in the right arm. In New York, Stuart Bowie drove slowly on to a level crossing so that he would not break two dozen eggs he was’ taking home. A locomotive bounced the car on to another engine, which carried what was left of Bowie’s car to the next station. None of the eggs were broken. Bowie was not injured. CANADA: Frank Moore, aged-35, grabbed the door rail of a moving tram which he was trying to catch at Prince George, British Columbia. The door rail was frozen and Moore

could not let go. He fell to the tracks eight miles further on, his fingers snapping off like icicles. His hands were amputated at the local hospital. ITALY: Francesco Coriigiello was teasing a : horse at Messina. The horse became excited, started stamping its feet. It kicked a stray cartridge which was lying on the grass. The cartridge exploded, shooting the boy in a foot. JAPAN: At Fukuoka, truck driver Jirochi Ohta, an insomnia victim, took a sleeping tablet and went to sleep at the. wheel in broad daylight. The truck ran on to a pavementi knocked down two telegraph poles, finished in a barber’s shop, with Ohta still asleep at the wheel. TURKEY: An .eagle swooped down on a seven-year-old boy who had discovered its nest near Istanbul. Turkey. The eagle fastened its talons on the boy and flew away with him. As the lad’s father watched horrified, the eagle dropped the boy to his death 1000 ft. below. AUSTRALIA: Star professional golfer Jim Ferrier .yawned in a train between Glenreach and South Grafton. The yawn dislocated Ferrier’s jaw. A doctor at South Grafton put the jaw back into place. Albert Ray Lawland lost control of his motor-cycle at West Pennant Hills, Sydney, and landed face down in a creek. His teeth lodged in his throat, lacerating it. A doctor later extracted the teeth. When a waitress cut her heel on broken glass at Coolangatta (Q), her friend Thelma Marjorie Newman went to help her, saw blood running from the wound and dropped dead from heart failure.