PEOPLE WHO FALL FROM THE SKY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2110, 8 February 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

PEOPLE WHO FALL FROM THE SKY.

FELL 3.000 FT AND LIVES r lO TELL THE TALE.

“The “irony of life” was strikingly illustrated in the newspapers the other day when one read, in the same column, of a rustic wild slipped from a six-barred gate and broke his neck, and on an Italian-aeronaut who fell I,oooft. with his collapsed balloon with no worse result than a sprained ankle.

It is not long since a French lady, Mme. Morel, and her daughter, while climbing in the Alps, near Zermatt, fell a ~tlistan.ee of 1,200 ft .(not much less than a quarter of a mile) : and, although the mother was killed on the spot, her daughter escaped with a few bruises. Mr Whymper, the famous mountaineer, . hul a similarly miraculous deliverance from what seemed to be certain death when sealing the' Matterhorn a few years ago. Losing his tooting, he fell from rock to rock to the-bottom of a precipitous gully, 100yds. in depth, only to recover his feet with no worse damage than a badly-cut head. And M. P.uville, a French writer, tells the story of an East Indian,-living in the Island of Ogbin, who fell over a -precipice, I,oooft-. deep, . with no more serious consequence than a good shaking. his. fall being broken by ’ the dense vegetation which grew at the foot of the cliff.

While climbing a waterworks tower, 240f,t. high, in Chicago not long ago a steeple-iack called Sutherland dislodged a loose stone and was precipitated to the ground, from a height of 175 ft., fortunately striking ■ the telegraph wires 40ft above the street and thus breaking liis. fall. Tlie spectators gasped with horror -as they saw tho man drop swiftly to destruction ; a rush was made to pick up his shattered -remains, only .to discover that he was practically unharmed. Not a bone was broken, and a week later bo was walking about as if nothing had happened. More- remarkable, ami indeed almost incredible, - was . the experience of Charles Woolcot when lie was mak-ing-a parachute descent in Venezuela. At a height of 3.000 ft, Woolcot flung himself- off his- balloon into space, when, to the horror of the thousands of onlookers, the .parachute failed to open. The man dropped like a stone with terrible sueed until, when about 200 ft from the earth, tho parachute flew open —and at once collapsed. He was dashed to the ground, his right thigh and hip were broken, both ankles 0 and knees .were badly crushed, and his soinal column was dislocated: And vet-, after a year spent in hospital, Woolcot was. -restored to soundness of limb after surely the most terrible adventure of ftvincui any man has lived .to tell tho story. But it is in the history of balloonin<r that one encounters the most remarkable cases of sensational drops from the clouds. When Air Wise, a famous aeronaut of seventy years ago, was once making an ascent. Ins balloon exploded at an altitude of 13,000 ft,, -and began to < lro A>'V ft H to the earth, more than a eouplo of miles beiow. “The descent at first was rapid,” Air AViso writes, ana accompanied by a fearful “loaning noise, caused by the air rushing SufaSve" 01 S/caused it"?disefiyerod'jhat the til it struck KhP ? l L out throwing the a « j uu j turned of his car. . thore I stood/ forehead, m experience Very d , ffcic!i • • -. onau t who had of Air Simmon?/ an 1 ./ nts While made 495 1* Essex. aescendmg nea> llo0 " suddenly burst m 1888, nib only or tin when within detached, tell A S’tlm. g-und, and Simmons was fatally^.'