100 Years Ago
In 1912, a peculiar accident occurred the previous afternoon to a Lake Shore train, the Pittsburgh Flyer, due in Dunkirk at 10 a.m. When the train was between Angola and Farnham and running at 60 miles an hour, the large steel tire of the middle drive wheel broke. One piece was thrown against the steel brace which held the rods under the edge of the first coach. The fragment rebounded away without causing any further damage. If it had struck the car in any other manner it would in all probability have penetrated it and carried injury and death into the passenger car. Another feature of the accident, which railroad men said had never occurred before, when the brakes were applied the front of the engine rose in the air about two feet and then dropped back into place.
Once more one of the grade crossings of the Erie Railroad in Jamestown had been the cause of a serious accident and had nearly caused loss of life. While going home from school at noon, Cecelia Samuelson, 15, of 252 S. Main St., was struck by a freight train at the Institute Street crossing, receiving severe cuts and bruises on both legs. She was with other high school pupils and saw the caboose standing partly on the crossing but said she had no idea it would back up. Before she cleared the crossing, however, the train did back up, striking her before she could get out of the way.
75 Years Ago
In 1937, Leo A. McMahon of Westfield was free this day of a bigamy charge after County Judge Lee L. Ottaway directed the jury to return a verdict of acquittal, holding that since his marriage to Gertrude Kunkler, Sayre, Pa., four years previously was void in view of a previous marriage, he could not be charged with violating the law for taking Caroline Schmiel of Westfield as his third wife the past spring. The second Mrs. McMahon was the principal witness for the prosecution when the trial opened at Mayville.
Chautauqua aerie, Fraternal Order of Eagles, accepted an invitation to hold its meetings at the Elks' Club, East Fourth and Spring streets, Jamestown, until the new aerie club, 325 E. Fourth St., was completely remodeled about the middle of the month. The invitation was accepted at an outing of the Royal Order of Bozos, fun-making organization of the aerie, at the Has Been's Outing Club near Blockville.
50 Years Ago
In 1962, a one-ton steam boiler blasted from its moorings in a telephone company building basement with incredible force and rocketed into an adjoining lunchroom, killing at least 21 persons and injuring at least 100. Nineteen of the dead were women. An investigation was launched to learn the cause of the disaster, described by one official as "unbelievable." The explosion occurred at 12:07 p.m. when about 100 employees of the New York Telephone Co.'s uptown Manhattan building - most of them young women - were crowded in the basement lunchroom. Without warning, the boiler blew and erupted into the room with the force of a jet-propelled projectile. It smashed its way up through the ceiling to the first floor, bounced back into the lunchroom and finally roared through an opposite wall.
The Bemus Point High School band, directed by Andrew Travis, would be one of several bands to be heard in downtown Jamestown on tag days for the Jamestown High School band's trip to Chicago. The bands would play Friday and Saturday, Oct. 12-13 in the business section of the city. The Jamestown High School band would march downtown several times each day on Tag Days. "Bucks for the Band" was the slogan of the committee working to raise about $8,000, the cost of the band to participate in the Midwest National Band Clinic to be held in Chicago Dec. 18-22. Arthur R. Goranson, for many years director of the JHS band and now director emeritus, said this was the greatest honor ever to be earned by the band.