The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1889-11-06
CURIOUS FACTS.

A Kansas City boy has an Irish setter
dog which he claims can trot mile in
3:39.
A citizen of North Hampton, N. H.,
has been justice of the peace for more
than fifty years.
In 1856 James G. Blaine and Melville
W. Fuller, the present Chief Justice,
were reporters on papers in Augusta, Me.
The Mississippi plan, under their prison
law, is to hire out the convicts to the
highest bidder, So per month being about
the highest price.
Within the past few years the area OF
grapevines destroyed by phylloxera in
France equals about one-half the vine
yards of that country.
In Galway, Ireland, it is considered so
unlucky to catch sic ght of fox that fish
ermen will not put to sea if they notice
one while going to their boats.
A recent estimate places the amount
of South Carolina phosphate rock mined
and sold in 1888 at about $40, 900 tons,
or 300, 900 tons more than in 1880.
Two Indian skeletons, one of them that
of child, were unearthed in gravel
pit on farm near Columbus, Ind. The
grave also contained powder horns, deer
horns and the bones of animals.
According to Massachusetts paper the
town of Plymouth boasts of the tallest
windmill in the world. This windmill
stands 119 feet above the ground and has
wheel eighteen feet in diameter.
Several cases have been reported dur
ing the past season of honey bees that
have been killed in their search for
honey on fruit blossoms sprayed with
Paris green for the codling-moth.
According to a paper read at con-
gress ct strssburg, Germany, thirty-two
per cent. of railway passengers in Prussia
travel fourth class, twenty-one per cent.
third class, 20.5 second and only s.s
first.
A mine of natural shoe-biacking has
been discovered in Utah. It contains
sixteen per cent. carbon, thirty-four per
cent. aluminium and the remainder clay.
It produces a fine polish not easily de-
stroyed.
The Irish Pasteur, McGovern, in whose
family tradition has handed down q sue
cessful cure for hydrophobia, recentlyre-
ceived $50 from certain board of
guardians for curing four patients sent
to him by them.
Forty tramps went about st. Helena,
Cal., begging for employment. They
were set to work in vineyard, but by
the next afternoon all except three had
"folded their tents like the Arab" and
silently disappeared.
Herr R. Fricke, the African traveller,
says that travelling in the Dark Continent
is so perilous, owing to the cannibalistic
tribes, that he has been forced to carry
a phial of poison which he intends to
drink if he should ever be captured.
The Countess Magri, better known as
Mrs. Tom Thumb, is said to have fine
business ability, and she plans the routes
and makes arrangements for her travelling
company. She is the possessor of $4,000
worth of jewelry, which she wears at her
performances.
William Crawford, twenty-five years
old, who died recently in Chicago, was
peculiarly afflicted. He had only one
skin, which is to say that he had no outer
skin at all. The veins stood out all over
his body in the plainest manner possible
From the time he was six years Of age
young Crawford had been subject tc
bleeding spells, which were liable tc
break out at any time and on any part OF
his body.