Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-12-30
CURIOUS CONVERSATIONS.

The gold plate at Windsor is valued st
42,cOO,OOO
Paris has 100 public schools for boys
and IVA for girls.
/ In California strawberries are now ripe
and in plentiful supply.
| "A Michigan minister has recently mar
ried negress whom he converted.
| The coal taken to London by rail and
canal exceeds 100000 tons per annum.
To photogr aph flying insect requires
an exposure of 125 900 part of a second.
The proportion of Anglo-Saxon words
| in the English Bible is 81 per cent Of the
whole.
There are now about two and quarter
| millions of acres IN Scotland occupied by
deer forests.
Maryland has boy II years old who il
feet ~ inches high and weighs 1s5 pounds.
He lifts $50 pounds with ease.
The Sultan has prohibited Turkish
women from wearing French costumes in
the streets of Constantinople.
To procure rain the Peruvians used to
set black sheep in field, pour chica over
| it and give it nothing to eat till rain fell.
AN island comprised Of about so acres
of rice land has broken loose in a river near
Depere, Wis, and is floating down the
stream.
The value of the Crown of England,
exclusive of the cost of the metal, is s1Oo,-
600. It has been four times in pawn; once for
$4,000 only!
a powerful odor of musk that even at the
distance of 100 yards he can smother his
enemy to death.
The first Russian newspaper was pub
lished in 1908. Peter the Great took per-
sonal part in its editorial composition and
in correcting proofs.
The st. Lawrence river is the only alb
solute1y foodless river in the world. Its
greatest variation. caused by drought or
rain, never exceeds a foot.
-Hindostan, Martin county, Ind, has
disappeared from the face of the earth. 1t
was once 3 county seat, and in the early days
an important trading post.
The banking business in London is
much greater on the fourth of every month
than on other days, as drafts and acceptances
commonly y mature on the lst-4th-
"A full-b1ooded Indian of the Omaha
tribe, Martin Chase, has been admitted to
pratice in the Federal Court at Omaha. This
is Nebraska's first and only Indian lawyer.
Cigar ashes are used for medical pur-
scarlatina, etc. They are useful on account
OF the lime and alcoholic properties they
contain.
The Speaker of the House of Commons
draws a salary of $4,000 a year while in
office, and when he retires he is raised to
the peerage, and receivesa pension of "a, 600.
The Deputy Speaker receives salary of
E2,500
There are ten main lines of railway
II n 8 O1n
trains run in and out daily, while the MAIN
lire trains are only about 40. The ten lines
carry 00000,000 suburban passengers per
annum.
According to this theory of Mr.. Thomp-
son. the end of the world (which is 100000
years in the future) will not be brought
about by excessive heat, as limited in the
Bible, but by the remnant of humanity being
frozen to death.
in recent years number of expedi-
tions, scientific and commercial, have
touched at Nova Zembla, but the island is
still little known, and even the greater part
of its coast line is not yet accurately laid
down on the maps.
In Waterbury, Conn.,, an engine which
stands on a space of 7-16 of an inch square
And reaches height of "a of an inch has
been made. 1t has 148 parts held together
by 81 screws. The diameter of the cylinder
is l-26 of an inch and the whole weighs three
grains.
The sacred standard at Constantinople
is believed to be formed of the neither gar
ment of Mohammed, and a pair of his py-
jamas, which are reverentially preserved at
Lahore, are held by the faithful to have
miraculously extinguished q fire at that
place no longer ago than ls49
The Japanese believe in more mythical
creatures than any other people on the
oIol ol,a vii M Sav Amnnn than a re.
mythical animals without any remarkable
peculiarities of conformation, but gifted
with supernatural. attributes: such as a tiger
which is said TO live to be 900 years old. and
to turn as white as polar bear.
Abduction became so common in Eng
land in the reigns of Tudor princes that q
statute was passed on the subject, and this
was followed by an act of Elizabeth, which
took away the benefit of clergy from the
offender and it was not till so late as the
reign of George ~. that the crime ceased to
be a capital offense and punishable with
death.
The Chinese cultivated wheat 200
years before the beginning of the Christian
era always considering it as gift direct
from heaven. Scientific agriculturists are
of the opinion that It was widely known and
cultivated by prehistoric man. At the pres
ent time it is the principal bread corn of the
leading European nations, and IS last sup
planting the use of maize, or Indian corn, in
the American states
I'm the district of Transylvania when
the ground is parched with drouth. some
girls strip themselves naked, and, led by an
older woman, who is also naked, they steal
a harrow and carry it across the field to a
brook, where they set it anoat. Next they
ait on the harrow and keep a tiny flame
burning on each corner of it for an hour.
Then they leave the harrow in the water
and go home confident that rain VIII fol-
low.
The total of the suns heat is equal to
that which would be required to keep up
.7s.o0 millions of millions of millions of
horse-power or about Il, 900 horsepower. for
every square yard, and yet the modern
dvnanlicaI theory of heat shows that the
snn,s mass must full in or contract IS meters
ner aunurn to keep up that tremendous
eneray At this rate of contraction the
solar radius will be one-hundredth per cent
less in 1000 years from now than it is to-
day.