Electricians in the 19th century didn’t always display the best decision-making abilities, as evidenced by the following trio of articles published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

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“Tested Currents With His Tongue” (June 26, 1892): “The death of Arthur J. Yeo, an electrician, 27 years old, of 2,181 Eight-Avenue, New York, was reported at the health department of that city yesterday. The cause of death was given as nervous apoplexy. Yeo died yesterday morning. The undertaker who filed the certificate said that Yeo had been killed by electricity. He was in the habit of testing currents by applying the wires to his tongue, and the electricity taken into his system by this means resulted in the nervous apoplexy which caused his death.”

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“Quinine Had No Effect On Him” (March 28, 1888): “Paul Grieshnber, a barber and electrician, of Stapleton, S.I., was arrested yesterday in New York, for being drunk and disorderly. He said he was sick and took twenty grains of quinine, but without effect. Then he took schnapps, which had too much effect upon him. Grieshnber had a copy of the Anarchists’ paper, the Freiheil, and Most’s “On the Art of Making Bombs.” In the Essex Market Police Court to-day he was fined $10.”

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“Gibson May Live To Get Married” (June 22, 1888): “George H. Gibson, the electrician who shot himself night before last, just before his marriage was to take place, because his tailor disappointed him, is not dead, as reported, and may recover.”