Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-11-24
CURIOUS CONVERSATIONS.

The pennyweight was the exact weight
of the old British silver penny.
Yellowstone National Park in North
western Wyoming comprises $500 square
miles
The first complete Italian translation OF
Poe's poems will be published in Rome next
month.
AT Tornea, Finland, June 81 Is Pearly
p hours long, and Christmas less than three
hours in length.
In Kansas careful inquiry is said to
reveal the fact that desirable land has in
creased 25 per cent in value in the past II
years.
One of the most important and valuabis
collections of postage stamps and otner
postal devices in the world is in the German
Imperial Postoffice Museum at Berlin.
Personal item from the Talmud:
"B1oses died on the seventh day of Adar, the
same day of the same month on which ne
was born, his age being exactly 1so years.
The marks G, s., d., used as the designs
tions for the principal denominations OF
British money are an abbreviation for the
Latin 'libra. solfdi ct denarii," pounds
shillings and pence"
The longest day of the year at Stock
holm, Sweden, is eighteen and one-half hours
in length At Spitzbergen, three and one
half months. At London, England, sixteen
and one-half hours, and at New York about
fifteen hours long.
-''China for the Chinese" is the motto of
the Ka-lo-ko Society of China, the member
ship of which is numbered by millions. The
society is secret. One of its main objects is
to prevent foreigners from living in the
Celestial Empire, and another is to dethrone
Tartar EmnerOr restore
ancient Ming dynasty.
The richest man in New York is John
D. Rockefeller, who is said to have nearly
$3.50, ,OO0, 600. Then follow the Astors with
probably $50 600. 900. Cornelius Vanderbilt
with about S125, ,0G0 600 and Jay Gould, who
may have sloo,0O0,Oc0. The richest man
America has ever seen was William H.
Vanderbilt, who. ut the time Of his death,
was worth s29O,C000O0.
The ancient cubit varied among differ
ent peoples. 1t is the length of the human
arm from the elbow to the tip of the middle
finger. According to the most recent in
yestigations, the Roman cubit was 1s.H
inches in length: the Greek. 1890. and the
Hebrew from 90 "a to 81. SO, the variations be-
ing due to the age and the locality in which
the measure was employed.
The chief scenes of shipping disasters
that occur off coasts are, in England,
the approaches to the Thames, the Mersey.
the Humber and the Tyne; the entrance to
the Channel and the Norfolk and Cornish
coasts In Scotland the Firths of Forth and
Clyde. In Ireland the wreck localities are
scattered pretty imparrially along the east
ern shore from Larne to Cape Clear.
The Norwegians make of goats milk
brown cheese, called "mysost," which
does not look very inviting to a foreigner.
1t is made in the shape of little bricks. 4
native, Dr. julius Nicbolyson, was sending
some Norwegian delicacies to a friend in
Germany, and among others he put in
thanked him for the salmon. etc, and then
continued: '"The soap is very nice: but We
find great difficulty in making the lather"
This was the cheese!
What is called the 'facial angle was
invented by Feter Camper, and first de-
scribed by him in a book published in 1871.
Its use is in measuring the elevation of the
forehead. One line is drawn from the mid
die of the ear TO the edge of the nostrils, and
another thence to the ridge of the frontal
bone, and the greater the angle the greater
is supposed to be the intelligence of the sub
ject measured. In the inferior races the
facial angle is usually between 60 and 10;
with Europeans it is from IS to 50 degrees.
In Yucatan, men, women and children
smoke, and hundreds of girls are employed
in making cigarettes. The better class Of
and city the ladies may be seen sitting be-
hind the prison-like gratings of the win
dows Of the houses quietly rolling up to-
bacco in small piece of maize husk and
ing that the toasting of the maize hUsk as it
burns gives a delicate flavor to the cigarette
far SURPRISING that of tobacco leaf or paper.
The grain, the smallest weight in use,
was called from being originally the
weight of a grain of wheat. A stat
ute, passed in England in 1856, ordained
that 32 grains Of wheat. taken from the
middle of the ear, or head, and well dried,
should make a pennyweight, 20 of which
should make an ounce, while II ounces were
to make pound. The pound. therefore con-
sisted then of 1850 grains. Some centuries
grains. which mako the troy pound, as now
used, $3.50 grains.
The postage stamp will be 80 years old
in May of next year. Its inventor was
printer, James Chalmers, of Dundee, Scot
land, who died in 1858. England, 81 years
ago, introduced the new system of prepar-
ing letter postage. and according to decree
of December q. 1889, issued the first stamps,
which were to be put before the public on
May 6 of the following year, as noted above.
a year later they were introduced in the
United States and Switzerland: and within
three years had become common in Bavaria,
Belgium and France.
"A Yakima, Wash, artesian we'll is e1-
hibiting most peculiar characteristics. The
drill was sent down 29O feet, when work was
suspended, awaiting casing, owing to = phe-
nomenon which cannot be accounted for
Sometimes there is q suction, and sometimes
a blast of air from the well. One day piece
of paper placed over the hole would be
drawn down, while the next it would be sent
flying into the air. That an air chamber
has been struck there is little question, but
the varying mood of the wind is what is
puZzling those who are interested.
The african pumpkin" or gamhen, is
very different from the well known Amer
lean fruit of that name, being q tree with
short but abnormally thick trunk. but it is
of the pompion family to which belong the
melons. The trunk grows about II feet high,
with a diameter of from 8 TO feet. The
rind is white as chalk and perfectly smooth,
and the clumsy trunks among the green
shrubbery look more like marble columns
tnan anything else. These plants attain q
wonderful age; Wellstedt reports having
found at Kadhub, not far from Tamarid in
the bark of gamhen trunk an Arabian in
scription bearing the date of 1910. The wood
is not solid and compact like that of the
trees we know, but full of sap and cuts like
a turnip. A penknife is sufficient to cut
into the trunk OF gamhen, over
WHICH the flowers on the top can be reached.