Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1892 — UNLUCKY 1892. [ARTICLE]

UNLUCKY 1892.

Tho Most Disastrous Year tho United States Has Ever Known. If the remaining six -month of this year shall duplicate or even approximate to the record of disasters which, have occurred in the first six the year 1892 will be set down as the moat fatal to life in the United States that has ever been known. Fires, floods, explosions, mine casualties, cyclones, wind-storms, lightning—all the elemental forces indeed seem to have combined with human agencies to destroy life, and to present an aggregate of great disasters in comparison with ■which ordinarily terrible events seem to lose their significance or attract personal attention only. Since January 1 there have been four destructive wind storms, killing nearly 200 persons, viz.: April 1, Missouri and Kansas, 75;‘ May, 16, Texas, 15; May 27, Wellington, Kan., 53; June 16, Southern Minnesota, 50. In the same period, there have beep four great floods, viz.: April 11. Tombigbee River, 250; Mky 18. Sioux City, lowa, 35; May 20, Lower Mississippi, 36; Jupe 5, fire and flood, Oil Creek, Pa., 193. There also have been four mining disasters, viz.: Jan. 7, McAllester, I. T., 65; April 20, Minersville, Pa., 12; May 10, Roslyn, Wash., 14; May 14, Butte, Mont., 11. Three fires have been unusually disastrous to life, viz.: Jan. 21, Indianapolis Surgical Institute, 19; Feb. 7, Hotel Royal, New York, 30; April 28, theater, Philadelphia, 12. Besides these there were on March 21 an explosion at Jordan, Mich., by which 10 lives were lost; June 13, the explosion at tho 3lare Island Navy Yard which killed 15; and June 15, the fall of the bridge over Licking River by which 32 lives were sacrificed. These are the principal disasters of the year thus far, and they involve an aggregate of 960 lives. Adding to this total the sum of losses by minor accidents as reported in the newspapers, we have the following sad and unusual record: By lire. 876; by drowning, 1,364; by explosions, 313, by falling structures of various kinds, 267; by mine disasters, 308; bywind storms, 340; and by lightning, 120;- grand total, 3,588. The total loss of life by these causes during the whole of last year—and 1891 was one of tho most destructive years on record —was 5,762. S& it is evident that 1892 will far surpass its predecessor. It is a sad and appalling record, this, of great disasters following so closely upon ■ each other’s heels. It recalls the days of the war, when one took up the morning paper only to read the list of killed and wounded in the previous day’s battle, and with the same result then as now, viz., that the great battles so overshadowed the smaller ones that little attention was paid to the latter. So now the great cataclysms so far eclipse the smaller ones that the latter, though they would be considered as shocking and exceptional in any ordinary time, are now hardly an hour’s wonder.