This day in The Record in 1916
Thursday, Feb. 10, 1916
A five year old boy accidentally burns himself to death in a South Troy apartment that was supposed to be locked, The Record reports.
Charles Tamosaitis of 351 Fourth Street dies two hours after setting himself on fire while attempting to light a charcoal fire in his apartment during his lunchtime break from school. Since both of his parents work during the day, Charles is supposed to go to a neighbor’s apartment for lunch. His father, Peter Tamosaitis, is “at a loss to know where his child had secured a key to the apartment.”
The boy “had placed an oil can and a box of matches on a chair that had been pulled up to the stove,” our reporter explains, “It is presumed that the child sprinkled the substance over the coal and was enveloped in the flames that followed the striking of the match.
“His cries were heard by persons downstairs who went to his rescue and tore the burning garments from his body. Members of the Osgood steamer company and Truck No. 2, summoned for this purpose, put out the fire with extinguishers.”
Young Tamosaitis is treated by city coroner Dr. C. F. Archambeault and police surgeon A. J. Hambrook but there’s little they can do. Peter Tamosaitis is notified in time to speak to reporters, but his wife’s reaction is unrecorded.
SPANISH WAR VETERANS. Tonight’s memorial session of the Marcus D. Russell camp of United Spanish War Veterans at the county court house commemorates three national milestones: the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and the sinking of the USS Maine that triggered the Spanish-American War. 260 American sailors died when the Maine blew up in a Havana harbor on February 15, 1898.
“Like the men of Lexington [in 1775] these men had to die that the nation might rouse itself to the performance of a duty that could be performed only by war,” says orator Frederick E. Draper Jr.
“The Maine went down, but not to oblivion. Her name is forever linked with the one great magnanimous deed of the American people, the Spanish war, by which at no little cost to ourselves we gave self government to Cuba and Porto Rico and to those countless islands of the Pacific an opportunity for ultimate self-government.”
The U.S. government blamed the explosion and sinking on the Kingdom of Spain, which then ruled Cuba, and subsequently liberated the island in the war along with Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands. Of these, only Cuba is actually independent of the U.S. in 1916.