Miscellaneous News Stories

Three Killed In Plane Crash Near Goose Creek
Goose Creek, Tex. - Three persons were killed when an airplane crashed into a field four miles north of here yesterday.
The dead were identified as James Kelso Stubbs, 20, the pilot, David Leroy Arnett, 21, of Laytown, and Miss Patti Mosser, 20, a niece of Lieut. Governor Walter Woodul of Texas. (Hutchinson News Herald, May 1, 1938, page 1)

Submitted by Peggy Thompson

I. J. Raif Killed
At Houston While Trying to Rescue Boy From A Live Wire

Houston, Texas, April 30 While making a daring effort to rescue a small barefoot boy from the tangles of a live wire which was burning and shocking him to death, Ignatius J. Raif, a young blacksmith, was electrocuted this afternoon on the sidewalk at 1618 Montgomery avenue. By a strange freak of fate, little Adolph Reiss, aged 6 years, who first came in contact with the wire, and who remained wrapped in its coils for several minutes, receiving a current so strong that even his clothes were ignited, will recover from his experience, while his rescuer, who was merely touched for an instant by the deadly wire, was instantly killed.
            The accident happened shortly after 4 o clock. The little boy, so of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Reiss, 1911 Everett street, was playing in the vicinity of the blacksmith shop in which Raif was employed. Noticing a harmless looking wire dangling down through a leafy tree on the sidewalk, he carelessly grasped it. The wire burned its way into the little fellows hand and though it was a redhot razor, while a sizzling blue flame came from the point of contact.
            Several people on the street saw the entire occurrence, and they all say that the boy fell screaming to the ground, pulling the wire further down through the tree and falling on it. A thick white smoke came from the burning flesh of the boy.
            Raif was a witness to the occurrence from the start. Running to the rear of the shop he seized two pieces of dry board, and using them as tweezers, he endeavored to remove the wire from the boy. He succeeded in doing this, but his clumsy tweezers came apart, the wire touching his bare shoulders ever so slightly, but he dropped dead from the voltage which had passed through him.

Palestine Daily Herald
Palestine, Texas
May 1, 1909

FATAL RAILROAD WRECK

Houston, Texas, Special. - A Galveston , Houston & Northern train, coming from Galveston , left the track at a curve near Harrisburg , shortly before midnight, the engine turning turtle, and taking all the coaches off. Engineer Frank Cox was cremated under his engine. Fireman Daaneton is missing, and it is believed that he was also burned. While several of the passengers were bruised, none were badly hurt. The coaches were wrecked and caught fire, the train being nearly destroyed by fire. A spreading rail caused the wreck.

[The Charlotte Gazette, Drakes Branch, VA, Thursday, May 11, 1905 Submitted by: Bea. Adams King]