TERROR IN THE SKY

As a journalist, William G. Shepherd had a knack for being in—or getting to—the right place at the right time. On the afternoon of March 25, 1911, for example, he was walking through Washington Square in lower Manhattan when he noticed smoke pouring from a 10-story building. He raced to the building, reaching it even before the fire department arrived, and in minutes was dictating, to his editor at United Press, the tragic details of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York City. “I learned a new sound—a more horrible sound than description can picture,” Shepherd reported. “It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk.” Nearly 150 garment workers died from fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths, and Shepherd was the only