Our Day On Earth

1916

F. E. Barlow, employee of Frankfort arsenal, Philadelphia, has invented a bomb, and offered it to the United States government, which is most deadly of aerial bombs, spreading gases over a radius of 100 yards. Bomb is six feet long and five inches in diameter, formed like a torpedo.

Webb Weeks, a young farmer, near Geneva, O, did not want to miss an early car to the county fair. His watch was broken. He slipped his alarm clock into the pocket of his overhalls so he could keep posted on the time. While he was busily milking a somewhat nervous cow the alarm went off. Weeks did not go to the fair.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 26, 1916, p. 1.

Note: 'O' means Ohio; 'overhalls' is original to the article.

French Flyers Drop Bombs

1916

Depots of German Troops Violently Attacked.

PARIS, France. — The French war office issued the following statement of an air attack on German depots by French aviators:

"During the night ten of our aeroplanes dropped sixty bombs of heavy caliber on important military factories south of Bruges. The bombardment was carried out from a height between 400 and 800 meters and was very effective.

"On the same night 104 bombs were dropped on ammunition depots and other military establishments north of Somme-Py. Violent explosions were heard.

"Finally one of our air squadrons attacked the barracks and aerodrome at Saarburg (in Lorraine). Twenty well aimed bombs of heavy caliber inflicted serious damage."

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 2.

Music and Bombs

1920

Music and the making of bombs do not go together, and the man who is radically against his government has no music in his soul, asserts the New York Mail. These facts are both evident, say reports of those who have investigated the homes of "suspects" for the Government.

"No musical instrument, not so much as a harmonica, has ever been found in a home that was raided by Government authorities in connection with Bolshevism," says M. M. Roemer, member of a music goods sales corporation.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 6.

Display of Dead Wife's Ashes Angers Former Ballplayer

1915

Mike Donlin Demands Revenge in Court

Mike Donlin, who forsook the New York National League baseball club for the stage, asked Magistrate Simms in a New York court to punish Ray E. Frye for alleged desecration of the ashes of Mabel Hite, Donlin's deceased wife, an actress, who died in 1912.

The former baseball star charged that the employees of Campbell's undertaking establishment were guilty of disorderly conduct by utilizing the urn containing the actress' ashes as a "prop" in a "press agent frame-up" staged one night recently at Murray's restaurant in New York.

According to the testimony of Jack Best, coat room boy at the cafe, Frye came in for supper on the night in question, and left the carefully wrapped urn in his care with the admonition that he "Be careful of it because it may explode." Visions of concealed bombs prompted the boy to tell Patrick Kyne, manager of the restaurant, what Frye had told him. The urn containing the ashes was placed in a bucket of water and the police notified. Detective Egan got it and found it harmless and returned it. In the meantime Frye had left the restaurant without Mabel Hite's ashes.

Magistrate Simms dismissed the defendant after hearing the full testimony. Frye said that he was taking the urn to a new repository where it was to be left until Donlin gave orders for its disposal and that he had forgotten it when he left after his supper. He admitted having told the coat boy that it might explode, but said that he had done so to insure better care of it. Donlin and Kyne nearly came to blows in the corridor of the courthouse after the case had been tried.

Frenchwoman Describes Her Experiences at Soissons

Printed Jan. 1915

Live in Daily Dread of Shrapnel as Bombardment Continues

Edinburgh, Scotland. — A letter has just been received here from a Frenchwoman whose home is in Soissons, long one of the hotly contested points on the French battlefront. She describes to her Scotch friend the misery of he inhabitants of the city. The Germans, it seems, were driven out, but not beyond the range of their big guns. The Frenchwoman did not desert her home. She says:

"We have to remain in our house, for we really could not bring ourselves to leave it and all our possessions, although most of the inhabitants have left the town.

"For three months the bombardment of the town has continued, sometimes for days and nights without ceasing, and then we hide in the cellar — you may guess how happy we are. We simply live in dread of the shrapnel, which is going to fall on our house and set it on fire and bury us in the ruins.

"You have no idea what terrible engines of war the Germans have. Seeing everything around us burn and fall to pieces, we live in a sort of nightmare. Everything in our quarter is demolished. Fortunately our house has so far escaped, though all the tiles are smashed and the windows broken by the force of the detonations. You may imagine how uncomfortable we are in this cold weather, and the terrible thing is that no one can say how long it will last.

"On their way back from the Marne the Germans took possession of all the quarries along the hills to the north, which they had carefully prepared on their way south with concrete and iron, making of them veritable forts. They are terribly clever, and now they are shelling Soissons from the quarries of Pasley, Clamency and Crouy, from which they can dominate all the main roads from the town. There is absolutely no chance of taking them by surprise, because from there they see everything that happens. They have got the light railway to Coucy, which enables them to revictual from the rear. From Coucy and Chauny they have the main lines right to Germany, so that they can bring up re-enforcements as they require them.

"They have driven away all inhabitants, and they take everything movable they come across.

"Quite a lot of English soldiers have been here — fine men and splendid horses (we have not a horse left in the district) — but now they have left this quarter and are in the north. They did well, too, and I am sorry for them where they are, for with the severe weather they are going to be very uncomfortable.

"We also had some of our own men from the south, and they were shivering with the cold, for now it is freezing hard. I forgot to tell you that Crouy, Cuffies, Vailly and all these villages you know so well are all razed to the ground — churches, houses, everything — nothing remains.

"As I write the bombardment commences afresh, and I must run. The room is shaking and the table dances. Who knows? It is perhaps our turn now, for as I told you, we await the shrapnel that is to finish us off."

Bones of a Dog Found in "Bomb"

1920

Senders Now Plead They Are Only Two Boy Jokers

OAKLAND, Cal., Feb. 26. — A supposed bomb sent as a joke by two small boys to L. J. Lamb caused the recipient considerable uneasiness until the package was opened and found to contain the bones of a dog.

When Lamb received the package he noted a suspicious piece of rope hanging out. He summoned Police Inspectors Wallman and Flynn, who gingerly opened the parcel and found the bones of a dog with the following note:

"Dear Sir: We hate to inform you that the bones of your ancestors have to be taken from the grave where they have been buried for the last 400 years. The dues that are to be paid every hundred years are forty years overdue. Seeing that there has been no payment on the space for forty years, we are sending them to you, knowing that we could not get in connection with any other member of your family. You may expect them soon. — Manager Brooke, Lender Glen cemetery, London, England."

The inspectors traced the package to two 13-year-old boys, Lester Burpes and Neal Daniel, who declared they sent the parcel as a joke.