The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1891-12-30
CURIOUS FACTS.
The room in which Napolecn I died is
now a stable,

The room in which Napoleon l dled ID
now a stable.
The population of Iceland falls by
1000 a year at present.
A needle passes through eighty opera.
tions in its manufacture.
The pennyweight was the exact weight
of the old British silver penny.
There are thirteen miles of book
shelves in the British Museum at
London.
It is said that there are 23O, 900
singers in the choirs of the Church of
England.
An employer of German clerks says
that they work twenty per cent. slower
than English ones.
There have been twenty-seven cases of
insanity in the Bavarian royal family dur
ing the the last 100 years.
One of the objects of interest at Steu-
benville, Ohio, is an old foundry, built
in 1920, with wooden pins for nails.
Boiling to death was once in vogue in
England, France, Germany, Spain and
Italy, but only for the most heinous
crimes.
If a man shamefully abuses his wife in
Butte, Montana, half a yard of Grape Is
tackled on his door as a gentle reminder
to desist.
The Chinese not ~unfrequently condemn
a prisoner to keep awake Until he dies.
A criminal in such circumstances usually
lives nine or ten days.
Two very enterprising young men in
Providence, R. l., have organized an
appearance" company with the object
of keeping young mems clothes in re-
pair at a nominal annual expense.
The taflest men of Western Europe are
found in Catolina, Spain; Normandy,
in France, and Yorkshire, in England.
The tallest Americans are probably the
mountaineers of Eastern Tennessee.
The remains of the late King ia ia
were accorded an imposing reception
upon their arrival in West Africa. His
300 widows and a lot of warriors, who
kept firing shot guns necessarily, were
on hand.
Joseph sappel, of Philadelphia, Penn,
was buried recently. Ha had prepared
for the event by building an under.
ground vault and decorating it with
tables, chairs and pictures to make it
sshomelike." .
Hitherto the British bushel has been
reckoned as sixty-one pounds of grain,
but a change having been made in the
standard weight, the bushel in future Is
to be defined by the more reasonable
number of sixty pounds.
Colonel Heath says that the houses in
Catania are built of the lava which poured
forth from Mount Etna in great streams
on the neighboring clay beds. This
mixture of clay and lava is now mixed
and used to great advantage in binding.
The tools. used by q blacksmith of the
present day are almost identical with
those used in the same trade e three
hundred years ago. In a book on
"Mining," published at Basic, switzer-
land, In 1867, one of the illustrations
represents a blacksmith shop, in which
the anvil, hammer and tongs look like
the tools still found in every shop.
The ancient cubit varied among differ.
emit peoples. It is the length of the
human arm from the elbow to the tip of
the middle finger. According to the
most recent Investigations the Roman
cubit was 18.47 inches in length, the
Greek 1921 and the Hebrew from 1924
to 21.S Is, the variations being due to the
age and tho locality in which the meas.
ure was employed.
The chief scenes Of shipping disasters
that occur of coasts are: In England,
the approaches to the Thames, the Mer-
sey, the Humber and the Tyne; the en-
trance to the channel aud the Norfolk
and Cornish coasts. In Scotland, the
Firths of Forth and Clyde. In Ireland
the wreck localities are scattered pretty
impartially along the eastern shore from
Larne to Cape Clear.