CURIOSITY’S UPLIFT
Shortly after the Russo-Japanese war, there drifted in upon the Chinese shore one of the huge floating mines constructed by the Russians, containing about five hundred pounds of guncotton. This strange object greatly excited the curiosity of the Chinese, who flocked in large numbers to view it. While half a thousand of them were crowded in close upon the mine, marveling over the mystery of this flotsam, one of their number began to investigate it with a hammer, and, hitting the fuze a heavy blow, exploded the mine.
An American witnessed the event from a distance. Wondering what all the excitement was about, he had started toward the crowd with the intention of making an investigation on his own account, when, of a sudden, there was a flash and shock. The horde of Chinamen that had been clustered about the mine vanished in a cloud of dust. Fragments of heads, arms and legs rocketed skyward in the form of an inverted cone. The head of a Chinaman, severed from the trunk, went hurtling through the air, with the queue out-streaming behind, like a comet coming to perihelion. It passed just over the horrified American and struck the ground some distance beyond him.
PROUD EVEN UNTO DEATH
An inventor, who lived in the mosquito belt of Staten Island, constructed a dynamite gun out of a piece of four-inch-gas-pipe, and a dynamite bomb out of a short section of gas-pipe, capped at both ends. The bomb was filled with No. 1 dynamite. He placed several pads of felt between the projectile and the powder charge, to lessen the shock upon the bomb. By using small charges, he succeeded in firing a number of the projectiles safely. Although the velocity was low, still it was greater than that obtainable with the Zalinski pneumatic dynamite gun, which at that time was beginning to receive some measure of public attention.
The inventor was so fortunate as to have a “pull” with the congressman from his district, and through this influence he succeeded in getting Government permission for a test of his piece at Sandy Hook. In the meantime he had strengthened the powder chamber of his gun by driving on several steel hoops, in order to use larger charges of powder. So confident was he of the safety of his system of throwing high explosives, that, when the officers at Sandy Hook insisted on his retiring with them behind the bomb-proof during the firing of the piece, he balked and insisted that he be permitted to stand by his gun while firing it, as he had done in his previous experiments on Staten Island. He was not in the least impressed with any possibility of danger by reason of the fact that he was now using a much larger powder charge.