Sounds like the only thing to be "dash in pieces" was the guy's leg. patrick On 11 Nov 2014, at 00:15, Joe Bauman via Utah-Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> wrote:
We may live in an anti-science era, but check out the way some folks were 150 years ago. From the Nov. 10, 1846, Evening Transcript, Boston: “ATTEMPT TO DESTROY LORD ROSSE’S TELESCOPE. On Friday evening, three respectfully dressed individuals obtained permission to view the moon through Lord Rosse’s telescope, near Armagh, when the instrument was depressed on a level with the horizon, one of them cast a stone at the speculum. It happily did not take effect, and in the effort he fell and fractured his right leg. They were immediately arrested, and while undergoing an examination before the magistrate, they stated themselves to be from Cheltenam; and the one who threw the stone expressed his regret at not having destroyed the telescope, as he considers it ‘blasphemy for a man to scrutinise too closely the works of the Creator,’ and affirmed that ‘the right hand of the Lord will yet be employed to dash in pieces the enemy.’"
(This must have been quoting some British paper, and the news couldn't have traveled across the Atlantic so quickly that it arrived in Boston the next week.)