NEWS OF THE WEEK.
AN accident, which might have been most terrible, occurred at Woolwich on Monday. From some unexplained cause, a rocket which was being filled in the war-rocket store exploded, and the flames spreading, some hundreds of war-rockets were fired in succession into 'Woolwich and Plamstead. The rockets, which have steel heads, passed, in many cases, through solid walls, and in some instances fell in places crowded with people, but in no case was any one hurt, the only victims being a man and boy employed in the Laboratory itself. The long continuance of the explosions, and the abnormal character of the incident—an Arsenal bombarded by itself without human hands—created the wildest excitement, and before the firing had ceased, stories had flown to the far north of Scotland of how Fenians had blown up Woolwich, how the town was on fire, and how ambulances were arriving heaped with dead. Except in its grim suggestiveness, and in the mercy shown by Providence to the innocent, the accident was an ordinary one, the blowing-up, as it were, of a small powder-mill. There is not the slightest trace or any probability of incendiar- ism having been at work.
