Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1895 — JOY TURNED TO WOE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

JOY TURNED TO WOE.

MANY ACCIDENTS ON THE NATION’S BIRTHDAY. , A Score Are Dead and Others Will Die —Toy Pistol and Crackers Reap a Harvest—Four Hundred Fall with a Bridge. Celebration Costs Lives. .Press telegrams indicate that the national holiday was generally observed throughout the, country, and attendant to the celebration were the usual number of fatalities and accidents. The pistol of commerce and the toy pistol got in its work in the death list, many in the roll being victims of this deadly machine. Firecrackers came next in the list, with a number to their credit. Then came stray bullets, persons being hit at various times and places by shots from instruments held by cheerful idiots who shut their eyes and blazed away. Torpedoes hurt few persons, while the rocket list is small. Five persons dead and thirty-three injured was the record in Chicago. The dead were not all killed on the day itself, however. Three were victims of the day before, and one fell dead, presumably from heart disease, while watching the celebration, and one man was drowned. At Marion, Ind., while firing a cannon at the Soldiers' Home John Haupt, an old artilleryman and a soldier in the regular army for seventeen years, was killed by a permature discharge. During ths progress of a ball game at Hinckley, HI.. Peter Anderson’s 6-year-old daughter was struck in the stomach by a foul ball, causing her death. At Kangley, 111., a man named Mozener had one leg taken off by the explosion of a small cannon. In East St. Louis, two serious accidents happened on account of the celebration, and both will probably result fatally. Eddie Laumann and Willie Strathman, sons of prominent citizens, attempted to fire off a can of powder with a short fuse. In firing a salute at Milwaukee a cannon exploded and an old soldier was killed at the Old Soldiers' Home. A shotgun in the

hands of Charles A. Hull, a son of Silas Hull, a prominent farmer residing near Attica, Ohio, was accidentally discharged, fatally injuring his mother and his 11-year-old sister. William Boiler, 7 years old, of Tiffin, had both eyes put out by the explosion of a toy cannon. A Sioux Falls cannon improvised from a piece of gas-pipe exploded, breaking $2,000 worth of plate glass and dangerously injuring Richard Peterson, a boy who happened to be standing near by. At Dubuque, Henry Hilderbrand lost three fingers by the explosion of a torpedo, and William Callahan, 17 years old, had past of his face torn off by a cannon cracker.

CELEBRATING.