ROCKET AS PLAYTHING.

Taihape Daily Times, 21 August 1919, Page 3

ROCKET AS PLAYTHING.

Fourteen children were injured recently at South Shields by the explosion of a ship’s distress rocket. A boy named Clement Stevenson, employed at a shipyard, found the rocket in a boat and took it.holne. At night he showed it, to -a number of companicvns, and they began to make experiments. Stevenson first knocked off the nose of the rocket with an axe, and inserted in it a. spring tube used for firing rockets at sea_r As this failed to act 3. match was applied and the rocket exploded. The force of the explosion broke the windows of neighbouring houses and threw the children to the ground, injuring them about the legs. Fourteen were taken to the infirmary, five being detained.