Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 June 1909 — MESSINA AT WINONA LAKE. [ARTICLE]

MESSINA AT WINONA LAKE.

One of the interesting illustrated lectures which will be on the program at Winona Lake this summer will be that upon the earthquake at Messina. The lecturer, Mr. Frank E. Robertson, has just returned from the scene of this terrible cataclysm, bringing with him two hundred of the most remarkable photographs and auto-chromes of the actual scenes, places and conditions in the cities of Messina and Reggio, immediately after the quake. The destruction of these two cities is the supreme catastrophe of the age. It rivals In sudden, swift and wholesale annihilation of man and his works the greatest tragedies in human history—the fiery doom of Pompeii; the swallowing up of Lisbon; the cremation of Catania; the awful fate of the Island of Martinique—lso,ooo people passed from life as “in thetwinkling of an eye.” In the quake not only were thousands of lives lost, but buildings fell and whole cities were destroyed, tidal waves and fires completing the work of destruction. Mr. Robertson tells of the calamity with a forcefnlness that bespeaks an eyewitness, his superior illustrations making the lecture intensely realistic. The lecture occurs the evening of July 15. Legal blanks for sale at The Democrat office