…that “on July 6, 1944, a deadly fire swept through the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus during a performance in Hartford, Connecticut, killing more than 165 people.” And “that among the survivors was 13-year-old Charles Nelson Reilly. Never again, he would declare for years afterward, would he sit in a theater as an audience member.”
I remember the fire, but didn’t know that Reilly had been there.