Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 183, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1910 — HAPPENINGS IN THE CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HAPPENINGS IN THE CITIES

Dives from Brooklyn Bridge for $250

NEW YORK.—A sharp-featured, undersized youth in ragged swimming trunks, with a skimpy coat and an old pair of trousers thrown over them, dived successfully, from the center span of Brooklyn bridge to the East river, 135 feet below, for $250 In cash, two new suits of clothes and whatever renown the world may hold in store for a bridge Jumper. The late Steve Brodie acquired fame as a bridge jumper and long ran a Bowery saloon on the strength of It, but many say It was never proved that Steve really jumped! Several would-be suicides have been fished out of the river unhurt after Jumping, but Otto Eppers is the first Ibmp with unquestioned witnesses as part of a prearranged plan. The boy s first words when he was fished out of the river by the crew of a passing tug were: “Gee! But I hit hard!” His next were: “Say, whose got the makin’a of a cigarette?” Eppers is seventeen years old and the son of a lithographer. He weighs about HO pounds and has been unoffloial swimming champion of the East river ever since he got into the big

boy class. Recently he heard that a Brooklyn merchant was willing to pay $250 out of his advertising appropriation to the first man who would jump from any one of the bridgeg over the East river. Otto was the boy for the Job. He had jumped 104 feet from a bridge once before and the addition of a few more feet never caused him so much as a thought. "Sure, I’ll do it,” he said, and he did. Otto meant to dive from the new Manhattan bridge, because he thought it warf'-higher. The height in reality Is the same for all the East river bridges.* The police, however, were too watchful. He meant to shed his coat and trousers, but he didn’t have time. He meant to take off his heavy but the jive| did th_at for him. He meant to dive in one long sweep- 1 ing arc, “but somehow,’ he told aftterwardj “I started to twist, and then I couldn't stop.” Passengers on the ferryboats who saw him said ha turned like a pinwkeel. “I wasn’t scared a bit until ¥ jumped,’ he continued, “but I don’t remember anything after I hit until I came up again.” He was found floating on his back, half stunned and paddling feebly. “I tould have swum to shore," he boasted, and in the next breath he admitted, “but I wasn’t feeling very spry.” .A rubdown and two hours of rest in a hopsital found Eppers fit to appear in police court, where he was promptly discharged for lack of evidence that he had attempted suicide.