Firemen and Their Exploits With some account of the rise and development of fire-brigades, of various appliances for saving life at fires and extinguishing the flames.

On New Year's Day, 1866, some hours after St. Katherine's Dock had been opened for work, several persons came running to the gates from the adjoining streets, crying loudly, "Th...

"Aye, it have been dry this August, sure enow; and I reckon the rain won't quench it to-night." And the speaker looked up to the starlit sky, where never a cloud could be seen.

The opening of the drill this afternoon is a course of exercises with these familiar appliances; but they soon give place to other evolutions, such as jumping in the sheet, prac...

"We light our fires differently from everybody else," says the foreman. "We put shavings on top, the wood next, and the coal at the bottom; then we strike a steam-match, and dro...

Here are two tarnished and dented helmets of brass. They belonged respectively to Assistant-Officer Ashford and to Fourth-class Fireman Berg, who both lost their lives at the sa...

"I guess not," replies the New Yorker. "Why, as far back as 1885, fourteen out of every hundred buildings were too high to be scaled that way. We build tall here."

The horses are harnessed to the scarlet car as quickly as though it were a fire-engine; the crew of ten men seize their helmets and axes from the wall beside the car, and mount...

The speaker was watching a light van, which had just been whirled into a yard. Light ladders projected horizontally in front of the van, and large wheels hung behind, a few inch...

That was the problem which puzzled an unknown inventor about the year 1675. He probably saw that hitherto the appliances for extinguishing conflagrations failed at this point, a...

Imagine yourself gazing at two wooden sheds, both quite filled with combustible materials, and drenched with petroleum and tar. These are to be fired, and then one is to be exti...

The firemen turned out to the call; but little did they think, as they hurried along, that the fire to which they were summoned would burn for a whole month, and would become kn...

The tablet revealed the name of the street whence the alarm had been sounded; and at the clang the horses tossed their heads and pawed the ground, mad to be off. They knew the s...

Many an Edinburgh citizen must have expressed this decision in the memorable year 1824. Several destructive fires had occurred, and at each catastrophe the need of efficient org...

Looking at the terrible ruin caused in 1666, prudent men would naturally begin to ask this question. And some enterprising individual declared that a scheme must be launched whe...

The earliest machine, so far as is generally known, was described by Hero of Alexandria about a hundred and fifty years before Christ. He called it "the siphon used in conflagra...