On October 11, 1889, in New York City in a Downtown Manhattan district, Western Union lineman John Feeks was high up in the tangle of overhead electrical wires working on what were supposed to be low-voltage telegraph lines. As the lunchtime crowd below looked on he grabbed a nearby line that, unknown to him, had been shorted many blocks away with a high-voltage alternating-current line. The jolt entered through his bare right hand and exited his left steel-studded climbing boot. He was killed almost instantly, but his body fell into the tangle of wire and was cut open, bleeding, sparking, burning, and smoldered for the better part of an hour while a horrified crowd of thousands gathered below. Where the power came from that killed Feeks was never determined, although The United States Illuminating Company had alternating-current lines carrying many thousands of volts that ran nearby.

Obituary (The Wellsboro Agitator, Tuesday, October 15, 1889, Wellsboro, Tioga Co, Pa.)