![]() I was almost sorry when I did come to, for the screams of the injured seemed to ring to heaven. ![]() The whole world seemed to fall on me and I don’t remember anything for some time, perhaps an hour. Then, to my horror, I saw the roof of the theater open and down it came with a splitting crash that I will never forget. It was exactly the noise made by the whine of a bullet through the air. Suddenly a sinister sort of whistling noise above my head made me look up. ![]() … Lying in Emergency hospital last night … a Georgetown University law student told his story as follows: “I was sitting in the second row of the orchestra. He forced his body through a small opening in the debris far enough to reach tablets to several victims. … A small boy … helped keep life in a group of victims trapped far back under the place where the balcony had been. ![]() Mary’s there, and she wants me with her.” It took three able-bodied policemen to hold him back. He was the husband of a young bride who, with a girlfriend, had attended the theater. … A man came to the entrance, willing to fight his way in if necessary. It was a task that tried the souls of men. … In the lobby of the theater, firemen and policemen and strong civilians worked as best they could in an endeavor to extricate the wounded and the dead. The standing walls, unroofed as clean as if a giant’s knife had just cut the top off and left no vestige of it, enveloped a wild jumble of concrete, twisted steel, tangled railings, boulders of snow and indiscriminate tangle of wood and iron that a few moments before were the furnishings of a playhouse de luxe. … The labor of rescue was incomparably difficult. … No description will do justice to the awfulness of the tragedy. It was as sudden as the turning off of an electric light. Under the weight of the fallen roof, the balcony gave way. … With a roar, mighty as a crack of doom, the massive roof of the Knickerbocker broke loose from its steel moorings and crashed down upon the heads of those in the balcony. HUNDREDS, DEAD OR INJURED, BURIED UNDER RUINS AS ROOF OF KNICKERBOCKER THEATER COLLAPES RESCUERS BATTLE STORM THAT PARALYZES CITY: Wounded Are Slowly Dragged From Tangled Mass of the Debris … Relatives Weep in Vain at Yawning Doors of Wrecked Building.The snow’s heavy weight caused the roof of the Knickerbocker Theater in Northwest Washington to collapse on 900 movie-goers waiting eagerly to see a new George M. 28, 1922: Exactly 150 years after the Washington and Jefferson Storm came a band of snow that immobilized Washington under 28 inches. The month was so cold that ice flowed from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. February 1899: The Great Arctic Outbreak and the Great Eastern Blizzard dumped a total of 54-inches of snow in February in Warrenton.Strong winds emptied the Potomac River’s Tidal Basin and grounded ships in Baltimore’s harbor while flooding coastal areas. March 11-13, 1888: The Blizzard of '88 or White Hurricane took down nascent electric lines and telegraph poles from Washington to New York.At the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, one could walk from the lighthouse 100 yards on the frozen Atlantic. 16-18, 1857: The Great Blizzard’s foot of snow and wind wrecked ships at sea and almost buried Norfolk under 20-foot snowdrifts. The Washington-Jefferson snowstorm is Virginia’s biggest snowfall ever recorded. 28, 1772: Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson noted in their diaries that 3 feet of snow fell. Although Virginia’s snowstorms don’t usually compare to those recorded by our northern neighbors - such as Bostonians who shoveled 109 inches of snow in 2015 - some have caused so much havoc that meteorologists call them “historic.” Here are a few notable ones that turned much of Virginia white for days. Snow has fallen in Virginia for centuries, whether because of the “Little Ice Age” from the 12th-19th centuries or because of climate change in recent decades.
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