REMARKABLE ESCAPES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 108, 28 April 1908, Page 4

REMARKABLE ESCAPES.

The "irony of life" was strikingly illustrated recently ill the news of a rustic who slipped frotn a six-barred gat • and broke his neck, and of an aeronautwho fell l.niju feet with his collapsed balloon with no 'w'orse than a sprained ankle. It is not long since a French woman. Mine. Morel, and Imt .laughter, while climbing in the Alps, near Zer mall, fell a distance of liiilo feet (mil much less than a quarter of a mile): and. although the mother was killed on the spot, her daughter e.-caped with a few bruises. Mr. Whyinper, the fnmou- English mountaineer, had a similarly miraculous deliverance from what seemed to be certain death when scaling the Matterhorn a few years ago. Losing his footing, he fell from rock to rock to the bottom of a precipitous gully, UK) yards in depth, only to regain his footing with no worse damage than a badly cut head. Ami Mr. Parville, a French writer, tells th e story of an East Indian, living in the i-land of Oghlin, who fell over a precipice 1000 feet deep, with no more .-eriourt consequences than a good shaking, his fall heing broken by the dense, vegetation which grew at the foot of the eliir. While climbing a waterworks tower. 240 feet high, in Chicago, not long ago a steeplejack dislodged a loos,, stone and was precipitated to the grond from a (height of 175 feet, fortunately striking the telegraph wire* forty feet above the street and thus breaking his fall. The spectators gasped with horror as thev saw the man drop swiftly to destruction; a rush was made to pick up ],is shattered remains, only to discover that he wa.s practically unharmed. .Not a bone was broken,'and a week later hwas walking about as if nothing had

happened. More remarkable, and indeed almost incredible, was the cMporience (if Charles Woolrad, when he was making a pur.iehute descent in Venezuela. At a height of 3.000 feet Wooleo.it fliinfr himself oil' his Walloon, into space, when, to I lie hor,vor of the thousand- of onlookers. Ihparachute failed to open. The man dropped lik,. a stone with tcrrilile speed until, when about 200 feel from the earth, the parachute (lew open—and at once collapsed, lie was dashed to I lie ground, his right thigh and hip were broken. lHifh nnkhv and knees wobadly crushed, and his spinal column was dislocated. And yet. after a year rjient in hospital. Wooleoot was re

-tored lo soundness ~f li m l, ~fter surclv (he most terrible adventure of which any man ha* lived to tell the sloi'v. Hut it i- in Hi,, history of ballooning that one encounters the most remarkable ease,* of sensational drop- from the 'cloud-. When Mr. Wise, a famous aeronaut of 70 years ago. was once making an a.scent. his balloon exploded at an altitude of 13.000 feet, and began to drop swiftly to the earlh. more than a couple of miles below. " The dose-cut it first was rapid." Mr. Wise writes, "and accompanied bv a fearful moanintr noise, mused bv iiir'ru-hiii- through (he network and 'the «a eupili". Iron, above. |„ another moment f |Y|i ; , -light shock, ami lookimr up I" .-co wliai caii-ed it. I discovered llial Ihe balloon wa- eunliii" o\er. being nicelv doubled in. t|„, lower part into the upper."

Tin- balloon had. in fuel., fiiniii-,1 it--elf into a parachute, and. nscillatinj; w-il.llv. continued its descent until it -truck t!i,, i-.utii violently, throwing the aeronaut 1(1 yards out of his cur. "The '■■ir hail lin-iu-il liotloiii upward*, ami llii-iv I i-lornl." savs Mr. Wise. "ci.n"raliilatinjr myself, ami I he- perspiration r.illiii" down liiv lon-head in |n..l'usii.ii.'' Verv ililV.-iviil »a, tin- cxpct'icn .f Mr. Simmon-, an aeronaut win. liinl mi.l,. IT. >u«-. fill a-cents. While ,li-

...i-mliiiL' near Whilliani. in Kneland. in ISSS. hi- liallooii -oiddeiilv l.nr-f when will.in til'iv feel ni II arlh. The ear l.eeaille lle'laelie.l. fell lleavilv In the ground, and Simmons was fatallv in-iiir.-d.