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.

Blind Boy's Wonderful Feats

1905

Pennsylvania Youth Gets Along Very Well Without Sight

Young Stephen Mellinger of Denver, Pa., does things remarkable in one who moves, as he does, in continual darkness. His senses of touch and hearing are very keen. He works in the field. He sows, uses the rake and spade, helps harvest the crops, milks, climbs trees, and, what is still more remarkable, drives spirited horses and rides a bicycle.

The boy is as bright, and cheerful as any of his associates. He is able to harness a horse unaided and to drive several miles to the village, where the household supplies are obtained. Every morning it is his duty to hitch a horse to a milk wagon and drive a mile to Denver village. In this drive he is compelled to cross railroad tracks at two points.

Spirited horses are his delight, and two belonging to his father which are too wild for the average man to handle with safety are used by him without a thought of danger. It is unwise for others than he to approach these animals. The young man does not work, ride or walk in a hesitating manner, after the usual fashion of the blind. He takes a fast horse out on the road and gallops at full speed, turning out for vehicles and other horses and rounding sharp corners without pulling up. On his wheel he rides as if possessed of full sight, and can be seen alone miles from his home.

A Fatal Accident — Irvin Pottorff

Leon, Iowa area, no date, possibly before 1918

Irvin Pottorff Is Thrown From a Horse and Fatally Injured.

Irvin Pottorff, the 12-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. William S. Pottorff, who reside about three miles northwest of Leon, was thrown from his horse Wednesday afternoon of last week and sustained injuries from the effects of which he died Friday morning at 1 o'clock. On Wednesday afternoon about 4 o'clock two boys, Irvin and Willie Rumley, mounted horses and rode into a pasture to drive the cows home for the evening milking. One of the horses stumbled and fell, throwing Irvin on a stump so as to strike his left side and back. The unconscious boy was taken home as soon as assistance could be secured. Dr. Layton was summoned and on examination he discovered that two of the boy's ribs were broken, one of them having penetrated the left lung. This brought on a severe attack of pneumonia which resulted in death early Friday morning.

Mr. and Mrs. Pottorff have four children and Irvin was their only son. He was not only very industrious but an intelligent and promising boy, the pride of the household. They have the sympathy of the entire communion in their sad affliction. The funeral was held Sunday morning at 10 o'clock and interment occurred in the S[*] cemetery.

*Note: There's a tiny piece missing right here. It starts with "S" and can't contain more than two to four letters. Since there doesn't appear to be any cemetery near Leon that has a brief name like that, it might be a direction, like SW or SE.

$25 Reward for Missing Wife

1911

Editorial Quips

An Illinois husband has offered a reward of $25 for the return of his missing wife. "That's all she is worth," she says. That is love.

The Marquis of Landsdowne's Rembrandt, valued at $500,000, may go into the National gallery and then again it may be brought to America.

A Chicago professor says that lack of money is the bane of wedlock. In the matter of feeling this lack as a bane, wedlock has plenty of company.

Nearly 2,000,000 brook trout fry are ready for planting in Wisconsin's streams. They will probably develop into 2,000,000 fish stories later in the year.

Australians have perfected the milking machine so that it milks a hundred cows in two hours. But the milkmaid will continue to live in poetry.

Flat-wheeled trolley cars and all auto horns are to be regulated in New York.

The center of population, unlike most of the sons of Indiana, remains in that state.

Has Cow with Wooden Leg

1914

New York, Jan. 2. — James M. I. Galloway, veterinary surgeon of Kirkintilloch, Scotland, arrived yesterday from Glasgow with photographs of a cow with a wooden leg, which the veterinary says is almost as good to the cow as an ordinary leg of beef and much more effective in knocking out folks who try to milk her on the wrong side.

Other veterinaries laughed at Galloway, who is young and of an experimental temperament, when he decided to save the life of a cow after the leg had been cut off by a locomotive.

The only time the wooden leg gets the cow into trouble is when she stands too long in a damp field and the leg sinks in a foot or so. Mr. Galloway is going to visit his brother, a veterinarian of Washington.