"Look Up in the Sky": A Daring Female Aeronaut and...

The study of history need not be earthbound or all about matters of gravity ... our past is full of flighty characters and celestial happenings that have given our ancestors cause to look to the heavens. Beaconites have craned their necks skyward to witness some of the flying, falling and fascinating objects once seen in our skies ...

* One aerial amusement that once entertained our early citizens was when the acrobat came to town. On June 23, 1877, according to the Fishkill Standard newspaper, the acrobat walked across the "Five Corners" of Fishkill Landing--on a tightrope. The Standard reported that about a thousand people gathered at what was then Bank Square to watch a man risking break his neck. He had stretched a rope across Main Street from the rooftops of two opposite buildings. On the rope, at intervals of 18 inches, he had tied loops. "After taking up a collection on the street," the paper said, "the performer appeared on top of the building in tights and without a balancing pole or other device, went out on the rope and let himself down under it. With his body swinging in the air and his head down, he walked across the street by placing his feet, one after the other, in the small loops." The spectators gazed up at him in wonder from the street below and gave him a hearty cheer when he arrived safely on the other side.

* Female daredevils also wanted in on the act of aerial death-defying behavior. In the mid-1890s, Groveville Park (on the outer boundary of the village of Matteawan) was the site of a popular amusement park served by the new electric streetcars. For Independence Day of 1895, the main attraction was Miss Louisa Bates, an aeronaut who was to ascend above the park in her 40-foot balloon, and, at an altitude of 3000 feet, was to jump out and parachute to earth. The spectacle of Miss Bates free-falling to the ground was covered by the nickle admission charge, and included fireworks afterward.

* The celebration of a holiday like the Fourth of July with fireworks was a customary entertainment in our past. But the fireworks display on the morning of September 17, 1924, was unexpected and disastrous. At 8:15 of that morning the Chiarella Brothers fireworks factory at the foot of Mount Beacon exploded, killing one worker and leveling the factory. The emanating concussion blew over chimneys and shattered windows all over the east end of Beacon. People looked up to see the sky falling, as a barrage of stones, sticks and dirt fell on the city. "We thought the world was coming to an end!" shaken residents exclaimed. One factory worker was said to have been blown 200 feet into the air, and lived. A pregnant woman was knocked out of bed, scared but unharmed. Damage to homes was in the thousands of dollars; damage to frazzled nerves, incalculable.