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Morning Appeal Story June 5, 1889
Carson City, Ormsby, Nevada
What is this article about?
During the Johnstown flood, an unnamed rider on a bay horse gallops through Conemaugh and Johnstown warning residents to flee to the hills; he and his horse are swept away by the flood.
Quality green show the numbers
Measured from the scan
— how cleanly the OCR engine read the characters
- Mean ink quality
- 98.0% The length-weighted average confidence across the OCR lines — the mean of exactly the per-line scores whose tails the two figures below report. Typical is 99%.
- Illegible ink
- 0.0% Text sitting in OCR-detected lines that scored below 80% confidence — very shaky reads. Weighted by line length, so one long bad line counts for more than a short one.
- Uncertain ink
- 0.0% Text in lines that scored 80–90% — somewhat shaky reads.
- Matches source
- 98.53% How closely the served text matches the raw OCR of the same boxes, letter by letter, after collapsing spacing and case. This measures agreement, not correctness: the OCR is often wrong and the extractor corrects it, so 100% does not mean perfect, and a low figure usually means poor scan text was rewritten rather than that text was lost (length vs source shows loss).
- Length vs source
- 99.36% Below 100% means text was dropped from the OCR; above means text was added to make it read.
Assembled by the extraction model
— whether the stitched-together text holds up; catches layout and segmentation errors, which the scores above cannot see
- Transcription confidence
- 96.0% (typical 96%) How cleanly the extractor could assemble what it was given. Low here with clean ink scores points at layout analysis — the characters were read correctly but grouped or ordered wrongly.
- Comprehension
- 95.0% Whether the piece reads coherently start to finish. Can stay high while transcription confidence drops, when only part of the component is affected.
Clipping
Full Text
A NAMELESS PAUL REVERE.
His Life Pays the Forfeit of His Grand Heroism.
Johnstown, June 3.—The first man from the dam at the South Fork just arrived. The dam burst open in the center in a broad break. A nameless Paul Revere lies somewhere among the unknown dead. Who he is may never be known, but his ride will be famous in local history. Mounted on a grand, big bay horse, he came riding down the pike which passes through Conemaugh to Johnstown, like some angel of wrath of old, shouting his portentous warning: “Run for your lives to the hills! Run to the hills!” The people crowded out of their houses along the thickly settled streets, awe-stricken and wondering. Nobody knew, and some thought he was a maniac and laughed. On at a deadly pace rode this man, still ringing out his awful cry. In a few moments, however, there came a cloud of ruin down the broad streets, down the narrow alleys, grinding, twisting, hurling, overturning, crashing, annihilating weak and strong alike. It was a charge of the flood, wearing its coronet of ruin and devastation, which grew at every instant of its progress. Forty feet high, some say—thirty, according to others—was this sea, and it traveled with a swiftness like that which lay in the heels of Mercury. On and on raced the rider, and on and on rushed the wave. Dozens of people took heed of the warning and ran up the hills. Poor, faithful rider; it was an unequal contest! Just as he turned across the railroad bridge a mighty wave fell upon him, and horse, rider and bridge all went into the chaos together.
His Life Pays the Forfeit of His Grand Heroism.
Johnstown, June 3.—The first man from the dam at the South Fork just arrived. The dam burst open in the center in a broad break. A nameless Paul Revere lies somewhere among the unknown dead. Who he is may never be known, but his ride will be famous in local history. Mounted on a grand, big bay horse, he came riding down the pike which passes through Conemaugh to Johnstown, like some angel of wrath of old, shouting his portentous warning: “Run for your lives to the hills! Run to the hills!” The people crowded out of their houses along the thickly settled streets, awe-stricken and wondering. Nobody knew, and some thought he was a maniac and laughed. On at a deadly pace rode this man, still ringing out his awful cry. In a few moments, however, there came a cloud of ruin down the broad streets, down the narrow alleys, grinding, twisting, hurling, overturning, crashing, annihilating weak and strong alike. It was a charge of the flood, wearing its coronet of ruin and devastation, which grew at every instant of its progress. Forty feet high, some say—thirty, according to others—was this sea, and it traveled with a swiftness like that which lay in the heels of Mercury. On and on raced the rider, and on and on rushed the wave. Dozens of people took heed of the warning and ran up the hills. Poor, faithful rider; it was an unequal contest! Just as he turned across the railroad bridge a mighty wave fell upon him, and horse, rider and bridge all went into the chaos together.
What sub-type of article is it?
Disaster
Heroic Act
Tragedy
What themes does it touch?
Bravery Heroism
Catastrophe
Tragedy
What keywords are associated?
Johnstown Flood
Dam Burst
Nameless Rider
Warning
South Fork Dam
Where did it happen?
Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Conemaugh
Story Details
Location
Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Conemaugh
Event Date
June 3