Steamboat burns on the Mississippi below St. Louis and sixteen people are killed

At 10 p.m., the steamboat  A.C. Lacey with a full cargo and seventy-five passengers was cruising on the Mississippi River near Island Sixteen below St. Louis when hay on the deck caught fire.  Within minutes the entire vessel was aflame and passengers and crew were forced to swim for the shore.  Ten passengers and six crewmen died.  Samuel Clemens had served for a time as pilot aboard the A.C. Lacey the previous year.  (By John Osborne)