19 SEPTEMBER 1908, Page 3

A deplorable accident occurred at Fort Myer on Thursday evening

when Mr. Orville Wright was experimenting with his aeroplane. He had taken with him as passenger Mr. Selfridge, a Lieutenant of the United States Army, and had already flown several times round the parade ground, when one of the propellers broke. The machine fell to the ground from a height of about seventy feet. Mr. Selfridge, whose skull was fractured, died shortly afterwards, and Mr. Wright is in hospital suffering from a fractured thigh and cuts as well as severe shock. It will be noticed that the accident was due to a mechanical defect, not to any failure of skill or of scientific principle. The next day Mr. Wright was to have tried to satisfy the Government test.