Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1890-08-30
CURIOUS FACTS.
ITALIAN prisoners all wear red.

italian prisoners all wear red.
There is 100-acre tomato farm near
Griffin, Ga.
A Boston cat has just died at the ven
cradle age of twenty four years and five
months.
| A French commodore has been allowed
to inspect the forts at Kiel, Germany.
He was cordially received by the Ger
mans.
The students at the college for the
blind at Worcester, Mass, play cricket
splendidly with ball in which bell is
| placed.
The cabriolet in use fifty or sixty years
ago has reappeared in Hyde Park, Lon
don, England, including the ''tiger" at
the back.
A Judge at Troy, N Y, has held that
! the baby carriage is public nuisance,
and the mother pushing it around is
liable to arrest.
Milwaukee, Wis, is to build beer
palace at the Chicago Worlds Fair. It
/ is to beer monster, constructed entirely
of kegs, bottles and glasses.
/ Guatemala's area is 46,715 square
miles. Population 1850, 000 Salvador
is 1920, square miles in extent and con-
tains about CTS, 900 inhabitants.
Captain Peterborough, of the British
ship Loeb Elk, at Philadelphia, asserts
that on July The passed an island of ice
four miles long and eighty feet high.
This is the largest iceberg ever reported.
Zanzibar consists of the island of that
name, GA square miles in extent, and
/ several sections of mainland, whose area
is 5000 square miles, besides the Island
of Pemba, 373 square miles, and Malta,
210 square miles.
4 In Asia there is Thibet and Turkestan,
and in Africa the great desert of Sahara
to be explored. We know almost nothing
of Borneo, Papua or Madagascar, and
thousands of islands in the Pacific Ocean
are still unexplored.
| Sparrows in Springfield. Mass, are
not easily discouraged. They build
nests in the electric light globes, aud
though the nests are destroyed about
/ every second day by linemen, the birds
return and build them again.
The most monotonous city in its
buildings is Paris, the houses there be-
ing almost all alike. An attempt is
now being made to vary this by building
houses of the style of the Renaissance
and Louis XII, and hope is expressed
that the example will be followed gener
j ally.
The Russian saloon for tea drinking is
an interesting feature of life in Russian
cities The walters are attired in white
from head to foot, with large black
purse at the waist, aud all are men.
| Tea is drunk alone, or with lemon, and
| the sugar eaten from the hand. Eleven
or fifteen cups are not too many for an
old tea drinker
Alexander Jacques, French fasting
! man, has begun au attempt to beat the
record in London. He proposed to re-
main for forty-two days without any
food except a powder of secret compost
/ ton. He says he sustained himself and
his comrades for many days on this
powder while he was a soldier and the
I Germans were besieging Belfort.
/ Georgia pine will last as long as any
timber. Mr.. B. Dean, of Clayton Couu-
ty, recently brought to the Atlanta Con-
stitution Office piece of pine from one
of his sisters gateposts in Baldwin
County that was perfectly sound after
the posts had been iu the ground for
eighty-six years. The posts were hewn
out about twenty years after the close of
the Revolutionary War
About $50 B. c. the Ionans first in
troduced the present system of writing
! from left to right. Previous to the above
date, from right to lett prevailed,
although the method called "boustrophe-
don" (that is, alternately from right to
left and from left to right was some
what extensively practiced The ancient
Hebrew and Greek languages were writ
1 ten from right to left until about 450 b.
c., when the form of the Greek letter
was changed from the unical to the cur
/ sive, and the manner of writing changed
/ from right to left to left to right.