Simply Cannot Kill This Man

1908

Marvelous Record of One Born For Narrow Escapes

Easton, Pennsylvania. — Granville B. Snyder, an Easton printer, has had more narrow escapes from death than most living men. Some of his friends will tell you that he bears a charmed life, but Granny, as he is commonly called, scoffs at that idea.

"I guess it was ordained that I should die a natural death," he says, "and luck always seems to have stepped in and saved me from shuffling off this mortal coil in any other manner."

The first time Granny faced death he was six years old. Leaving home one morning and walking a short distance to Mount Ida, an immense rock 110 feet high, overlooking the Lehigh canal and river, he determined to climb to the top to gather honeysuckles. The north side of the rock is a sheer precipice, and toward this perilous point the lad's steps led unconsciously. He found flowers growing in profusion, and in his enthusiasm lost sight of the danger he was in. He reached for a stem, took a false step, and plunged over the perpendicular wall 110 feet to the towpath. Although he suffered a fractured collar-bone, both legs and arms were broken, and he lost a great quantity of blood from three gashes in his scalp, the doctor pulled him through.

When eight years old Granny fell through the trap in the haymow in Peter M. Correll's stable, in Bank street, while playing chase with companions and landed in the water trough. The other boys, terrified, ran from the building. When a stableman pulled the boy out of the trough he was nearly lifeless.

The same year he was bitten in the hand by a copperhead snake while playing in a yard near his home. His arm swelled to an enormous size. To the surprise of the physician Granny began to recover, and in a short time he was running around again.

When ten years old, and again when 12, he had two more narrow escapes from drowning. Upon the former occasion he broke through the deck of a sunken canal boat in the Lehigh and was rescued in an unconscious condition by James Herrin. The second accident resulted through him falling through a raft that parted along the old sawmill.

He had a thrilling escape from death on the New Jersey Central railroad in 1877. In attempting to jump from a rapidly moving coal train as it passed the Fourth street station his right hand caught fast in the side rod, he was thrown to the ground and the wheels clipped off his cap. He was dragged 25 feet, struck a signal target, hurled back against the car and thus his hand was released. Outside of a few slight bruises and torn and soiled clothing he was none the worse for the experience.

Twice he narrowly escaped death while handling firearms. The accidental discharge of a self-cocking revolver he was handling sent a bullet into his hip. The ball struck a bone, took a downward course, came out and then re-entered the leg. The lead is still there.

Upon another occasion, during a Fourth of July celebration, he picked up a loaded revolver belonging to a friend and discharged it in the air five times. Then, jokingly placing the weapon against his temple, he remarked, "good by, fellows!" and pulled the trigger. The hammer caught and Snyder lowered the weapon to examine it. He almost fainted when he discovered that instead of it being a five-chambered weapon, as he had imagined, it contained six chambers, and there was still a loaded cartridge in it. Only the fact that the hammer caught saved him from blowing out his brains.

Why a Cat Lights on Its Feet

1896

An experimenter recently undertook to discover why a cat invariably fell on its feet. He finds that a cat always falls on its feet providing it has a distance of a yard to fall in and enable to make a half turn in the air, so as get its feet undermost. It holds its paws vertically and manages to preserve this position during the rest of its fall, in spite of the initial movement of rotation taken by its body.

The mechanical explanation is simply that the animal, by thrusting forward its left limb, shifts the center of gravity of the whole body so as to make revolve upon the axis of the spine until the feet reach the ground. Moreover, a cat does not hurt itself by all from a height, not because it invariably falls on its feet, but because the structure of a cat's back and spine is extremely flexible. The muscles of its legs are extraordinary strong and numerous, and, further, it has elastic pads or cushions consisting of a mass of fibrous tissue and fat on all its feet, seven in each forepaw and five in each hind paw. — Chicago News.

Automobile Hypnosis Is Latest Disease

1917

Another disease has been discovered which is said to account for so many automobile accidents. It is motor auto hypnosis. Men and women are alike affected by it, and unconsciously lose control of the steering wheel.

Psychologists offer various reasons for the trouble. The term has come into general use only recently, but has been more widely observed since the variety of the phenomenon has been more closely studied.

It might be clearer to use the more readily comprehensive term of "automobile sleepiness."

There is, as most everyone knows, a certain lull about touring in a car. The air, the buzz of the motor, all have a tendency to quiet the nerves and produce a desire for sleep.

Frequently automobile accidents occur on country roads, with nothing to distract the attention of the driver of the car, no traffic to avoid, no bad places in the pavement. When such an inexplicable accident occurs the excuse that something went wrong with the steering gear is usually offered. In nine cases out of ten the steering gear was all right, but something went wrong with the man at the wheel.

A man was recently heard to remark to a friend about a remarkable experience he had enjoyed the night before when, he declared, he drove his car, after midnight, for nearly a mile and was asleep the entire time. Fortunately for the man, the street was wide and there were few cars out.

But this is merely an incident that is bringing before our psychologists this momentous question.

When an accident does happen it is but natural that the man dislikes to acknowledge his negligence. He has to blame somebody, so he blames the car.

Now come certain responsible scientists who prove conclusively that the man at the wheel is not always to blame. He is a victim of auto hypnosis. He becomes unconsciously drowsy. The feeling creeps on him unawares and before he knows it he loses control of the wheel and accidents follow.

There seems to be reason in this theory, and if there is, the victim should permit someone else who is immune from the affection to handle his car in future. Public and his personal safety demands this.

—New Castle News, New Castle, PA, April 13, 1917, p. 8.

The Fall of Miss Minnie B. Werner, Chicago, 1916

1916

Girl Will Live

CHICAGO, Jan. 25. — St. Luke hospital attendants announced today that Miss Minnie Werner, the stenographer who yesterday plunged sixteen stories from a window of a loop skyscraper, may recover fully from her injuries. An auto-truck load of cardboard boxes broke her fall.

—La Crosse Tribune, La Crosse, Wisconsin, Jan. 25, 1916, p. 5.


"I Must Be Hard to Kill"

These Are Words of Girl Who Fell Sixteen Stories

Chicago, Jan. 26 — Miss Minnie B. Werner, who fell sixteen stories from a window of the Transportation building last Monday, recovered consciousness today.

Her first words were: "I must be hard to kill."

—St. Paul Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, Jan. 27, 1916, p. 1.


She Things She is Hard to Kill

Chicago, Jan. 26. — "I must be hard to kill," was the comment of Minnie B. Werner when she recovered consciousness at St. Luke's hospital and heard how she had fallen sixteen stories to the netting of an auto truck.

Miss Werner, who is 22 years old and lives at 2417 North Washington, sustained a broken shoulder bone and possibly internal injuries. Physicians say she has an excellent chance to recover.

Elsie Werner, a sister, said she fell by accident, although the police were inclined to think that Miss Werner jumped intentionally.

—The Daily Review, Decatur, Illinois, Jan. 26, 1916, p. 10.


Excerpt from article called "Escapes a Matter of Luck," originally from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

She escaped with a broken shoulder and a few bruises.

She worked as a stenographer for a publication concern in the Transportation Building, 608 South Dearborn street, Chicago.

One day, about three weeks ago, she complained of being ill and left the office. An elevator took her to the sixteenth floor where there is a rest room for women. From the time she left the elevator until she was picked up, broken and unconscious, no person seems to have seen her. Whether she had leaped or fallen could not be determined until she herself was able to tell about it and then she said she fell.

From the window of the rest room to the ground is a distance of about 200 feet and Miss Werner fell headlong. That she was saved from destruction was due to a queer freak of chance. The driver of a big truck, laden with paper boxes, had stopped under the window. She fell among the boxes and they broke her fall.

When she was picked up after the fall a policeman rushed up and asked if she had leaped. "I fell," she said, although at that moment she seemed actually unconscious. As soon as she could talk intelligently about the matter her sister, Edith, asked her to tell how it happened.

"I did not intend to jump," she said. "I felt dizzy and went upstairs to the rest room. When I got there I couldn't make out the details of my surroundings. I went to the window for air. The next thing I knew was when I felt myself falling."

Then she told of how she found herself plunging, head down, toward the earth. Although she could have been in the air only a few seconds at most, so rapidly was her mind working, that it seemed almost an eternity. Her memory divides the period into two distinct phases, the first of which is clear and accurate in detail; and the second obscure and uncertain. She seemed to have a curious, detached feeling, as if if were not she but another who was falling, a sensation not uncommon in dreams.

Her first impression was that she was suffering a nightmare in which one imagines himself falling through infinite space. She felt that sickening faintness persons frequently feel when an elevator unexpectedly starts downward. Her chest felt compressed, as if inclosed with bands which were squeezing out all the air. The air seemed to pluck at her eyelids as if about to tear them away. There was a ringing in her ears and her body tingled all over.

She realized that she was perfectly conscious — able to stream. She idly wondered if she could move her fingers. She tried and found she could. And then came the realization of what it all meant. She was in full possession of all her faculties and yet she couldn't avert the disaster that lay below.

Then she passed into the second stage. The speed of her fall was accelerated. Now she did not seem to be falling. Instead she was caught in the midst of a canyon and the earth was rushing up to meet her. Where the buildings had been were nothing but white streaks and below them was the black street. She had a hazy impression that she was all right, but that the world had suddenly been turned upside down. Then the white streak and the black merged into one vast chasm of blackness. Apparently she never saw the truck before she struck it. Her fall carried its load of papers with her to the street and a few minutes later she was pulled from the wreckage.

—The Washington Post, March 12, 1916, p. 1, Miscellany Section.


Girl Who Fell Sixteen Floors Ready to Work

CHICAGO, Ill., March 13 — Miss Minnie Werner, the stenographer, who ten weeks ago fell out of a sixteen story window of the Transportation building, will be back to work in a week, it was learned on Sunday.

Miss Werner fell into a truck load of paper boxes, and her most serious injury was a badly fractured arm.

"If you ever had a dream that you fell out of the mountain you know something of what my experience was like," said the young woman. "Any way it shows that the popular idea that a person dies after falling a hundred feet is not true."

—The Racine Journal-News, Racine, Wisconsin, March 13, 1916, p. 2.

Boy Drawn Over Cliff in Coffin

1909

JACKSON, California — Lying unconscious in a coffin, Cecil Miller, 16 years old, was drawn up a 150-foot cliff on the bank of the Cosumnes river, near Plymouth Sunday.

While hunting on the banks young Miller stepped out on a large rock on Eagles' Nest bluff, which gave way suddenly and precipitated the boy down the bank to the water's edge. A companion ran to Plymouth, three miles away, for assistance. Believing that Miller was dead, a coffin was taken along by the rescuing party.

After much difficulty two men were lowered over the bluff with the coffin. The boy was alive, but unconscious, and terribly injured. He was placed in the coffin to be raised to the top of the bluff.


Shoots Both Wife and Himself

DES MOOINES, Iowa — Dennis Sweeney, connected with the coal mines at New Saylor, near Des Moines, shot his wife, from whom he had been separated for some time, and turned the revolver on himself. The body of Sweeney was found in a cornfield. The woman cannot recover.


Surprised, Regains Voice

POTTSVILLE, Pennsylvania. — Surprised by friends, Miss Sallie Sterner suddenly regained the loss of speech she sustained during an illness of five years ago. Physicians, puzzled by the loss of articulation, are still more mystified over the latest developments. The patient now talks as well as ever.

Man While Afire Falls to Death

Middlesborough, Massachusetts, 1914

Took Fatal Drop when he was Pulled from Stove. Friend, Weighing Two Hundred Pounds, then Fell upon him.

Frank Taylor, sixty three years old, of Middleborough, Mass., employed at the Thomasville Stone and Lime company's plant, below Abbottstown, died in the York hospital at 2:30 o'clock Sunday afternoon from hemorrhage of the brain and fracture of the skull, sustained on Friday at 5 p. m., when with Charles Able, who was pulling him away from a stove to prevent his clothes from igniting, he fell through a door, on the second story of a shack at Thomasville, to the ground, a distance of ten feet.

The Thomasville plant had been closed for Christmas and it is said that Taylor and Able had been celebrating the day. About 5 o'clock in the afternoon they went to their room on the second story of one of the company's shacks. Taylor sat beside the stove which was red hot, and fell asleep. Able suddenly noticed Taylor's coat smoking and tried to pull him away from the stove. As he did so he tripped and both men fell through an unlocked door. There was no balcony or railing and the men fell to the ground.

Able, who weighs 220 pounds, fell upon Taylor, Taylor was rendered unconscious and remained in that state until his death. He was removed to the first floor of the shack and Dr. E. S. Stambaugh was summoned.

On examination the physician found that Taylor had sustained a fracture at the base of the skull. He was taken to the York hospital in an automobile by Dr. Stambaugh and Charles Whitman. Able sprained his right shoulder in the accident.

Taylor had been employed about the plant at different times during the last eight years. Efforts are being made to find whether he has any relatives.

—Adams County News, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, January 2, 1915, page 6.