For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision.
—Titus 1:10
4940 Steamer Went Out Despite Warnings
The steamer Portland left Boston harbor in the storm of November 1898 and never came back. She left when all the signals for danger were flying; she left when the government agent at the signal office had advised out-going vessels to remain in port; she left when the owners of the vessel had commanded her to stay at dock.
Why she left no one has ever been able to say. Her captain must have been apprehensive, for he said to the lighthouse-keeper. “Keep your light burning bright tonight, for we may come back.”
—J. Wilbur Chapman
4941 Jogging In Airplane
Capt. Smokey Stover and First Officer Tom Zinn were in a cockpit of a 130-passenger Eastern jet en route to New York, cruising at 33,000 feet, taking it easy, when they both suddenly straightened up. There was a rhythmic thumping coming through the floor, so definite they could feel the vibrations with their feet. They checked their instruments, but there was no warning signal there.
They thought one of the landing-gear doors hadn’t closed, so they slowed down, but there was no abatement in the vibrations. Then they began to worry about their engines. Was one out of synchronization? A check showed that they were in perfect tune. Now the men really grew concerned.
They called New York to have a crew of expert mechanics to meet the plane. After a safe landing, as the mechanics were swarming aboard, the senior stewardess told Captain Stover, “We really had a weird passenger this trip. He jogged in the lavatory next to the cockpit for 20 minutes.”
—Atlanta Journal
4942 Father Swings Child Over Niagara
A spot is pointed out at Niagara Falls from which a father threw his little girl headlong into the seething torrent, without having the slightest thought of doing so. He took her in his arms and gave her a playful swing out over the abyss merely to see if it would frighten her.
The child in a paroxysm of fear, gave a sudden jerk and fell with a shriek into the great abyss. You say he had no business to trifle with her in that way. No more have you a right to trifle with your soul by swinging it out in foolish indifference over the great chasm of eternity.
—Eternity
4943 He Had Right To Be Hit
A New York Court of Appeals decided against a plaintiff in an action for damages. A man who was walking along Fourth Avenue stopped on a temporary bridge to watch some work being done on the subway. A workman advised him to move on, as he was liable to get hurt. The man refused, claiming he had a right to be on a public street. A few minutes later he was struck on the head by a piece of iron from a pipe high above. He was severely hurt. He sued for damages.
The court decided that he was perfectly justified in staying where he was hurt after being warned. However, the warning he had received and had not heeded removed any further obligation on the part of the company. The court explained further that the contractor had no right to remove the man by force. Said contractor had performed his full duty by warning of the peril.
4944 Inexcusable Carelessness In The Sub
On May 15 a nuclear submarine, moored in the San Francisco naval shipyard, suddenly sank to the bottom. A U.S. House armed-services committee has since reported that “inexcusable carelessness” led to the sudden sinking of the submarine.
“Indicative of the carelessness was the fact that two different construction crews were working at cross-purposes in attempting to trim the submarine for some tests.
“While one crew was pumping water into the stern, another crew was pumping water into ballast tanks in the bow, trying to trim, or level, the submarine. While the bow crew was off to lunch, the stern crew let water out of the stern tanks, and the bow-heavy submarine sank alongside the fitting-out pier. …
“The navy has informed Congress that it may cost as much as $25,000,000 to raise and repair the submarine, originally estimated to cost $50,000,000.”
4945 Psychology Of Snowmobile
There are over 1.4 million snowmobiles abroad in the land, and the number is growing fast. Nature lovers, insisting that the little vehicle causes damage to the environment and shatters the tranquillity of wilderness regions, have begun pressing for anti- snowmobile legislation. But prospects for effective regulation are poor; the likelihood of an outright ban is nil.
Now, however, a study by a Michigan State University professor suggests a more subtle way to deal with the proliferation of the abominable snowmobile (as its foes call it). If it is made thoroughly safe to operate, devotees will get bored and look for something more exciting.
The derring-do that had survival value in frontier days is still extolled in the U.S.; yet it is obsolete. In an industrialized nation where most jobs are routine, a man cannot win status through on-the-job valor. To compensate, he surrounds himself with power tools, outboard motors, high-performance cars, snowmobiles and the like. These give him at play the feelings of control, power, masculinity and risk no longer available at work.
—Time
4946 It Wasn’t Funny After All
Anglican student minister, William Barnes, and his fiancee, Carol Black, of West Hill, Ontario, went on a hike up Blue Mountain to sketch the Georgian peaks.
On the way down they came across a ski lift in operation but with a sign saying not to board it unattended. They did.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if it stopped,” said Miss Black.
Well, it did, and it wasn’t.
They jolted to a halt 150 feet from the top and a mile from the bottom, twenty feet above the ground.
The couple shouted, sang a few hymns, and read from a book, until the light failed.
At 8:30 a. m. on Tuesday, fifteen hours on board the ski lift, Barnes bailed out, injuring his back in the plunge. He eventually located two men who found the lift attendant.
4947 Tackler From Out-Of-Bounds
The 1935 game between Dartmouth and Princeton was played in a blinding snowstorm. A Dartmouth man was on his way to a touchdown, with no Tiger player within ten feet of him, when from the sidelines a spectator suddenly scampered onto the field and made a perfect tackle. The touchdown was allowed, of course, and the doughty tackler was rewarded for his pains by being bounced out of the Palmer Stadium on his ear.
4948 That Was A Friendly Bullet
For the hard-luck award of the year, consider Antonio Edralin, mayor of a Filipino village. He was being welcomed to a festival by a three-gun salute, but he ended up with one of the bullets in his chest. An investigation showed it was merely an accident, not an assassination attempt. But it put the mayor in the hospital just the same.
—Stanley C. Baldwin
See also: Individualism ; Stubbornness.