The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1893-06-07
CURIOUS FACTS.

England imports Canadian turkeys.
A Philadelphia bellboy is a grand
father.
A hens egg resembling pie, it is
claimed, is an oddity at Ellijay, Ga.
Turkey has 1900 postofices, but no
records are kept of the amount OF mail
handled.
Reuben Lasher, of Rensselaerville,
N. Y, has a sheep which recently gave
birth to four lambs.
The date of the invention of enve-
lopes is uncertain, but they were IN
common use in Swift's day.
An Illinois man is credited with the
curious feat of writing 41Cs word on
one side of an ordinary postal card.
A letter addressed to "Roast Pig,
Mass. !" was deciphered by the Boston
mail clerks to be intended for Dedham.
The popular leather known as Cor.
doven and used for dress shoes is
really horsehide. It is supposed to be
waterproof.
During the complicated process of
manufacturing stamps, they are
counted eleven times in order to guard
against pilfering.
A bridal couple on their wedding
tour, from Brussels, reached Rouen,
were arrested rs cholera suspects, and
spent week in pest-hOuse.
Jack Rice, one-eyed, one-armed
and one-legged man, of Flushing, Long
Island, has just been sent to jail for
one month for thrashing peighbor.
Right at the foot of great glacier
in New Zealand there is tropical
growth of plant life and hot spring,
with water issuing forth at q tempers
ture of over 100 degrees.
In the museum at Mayence are sew
eral piles from Roman bridge across
the Rhine there. They are long and
heavy beams, tipped with iron to pre-
vent splitting when driven. & -
The sap of the COW tree, as its name
implies, resembles milk both in look
and taste, and is very wholesome and
nourishing. The tree grows in Ven
ezuela, and frequently attains height
of 100 to 125 feet.
An American travelling in the Sahara
recently wrote to one of the Chicago
newspapers, saying he had found q
bird's-eye view of the Columbian ex.
position hung up in an Arab tent on
the edge of the desert.
A Brooklyn physician has dozen
patients who have nothing to do but
nurse fanciful ailments and discuss
them with their visitors. He pre-.
scribes bread pills for them, and
imagination effects temporary cure.
One of the oldest houses in America
is generally reputed to be located at
Santa Fe, New Mexico. The building
was erected before the Spanish con-
quest, and itsis additionally reported
that Coronado stopped there in l54O.
The largest slide in the world is at
Aprach, in Switzerland, from Mount
Pilatus to Lake Lucerne, eight miles.
It is made of trunks of 25,O trees,
laid at an angle of ten to eighteen de-
grees, and logs placed in it descend
to the lake in six minutes.
A curious will is to be placed on
record in Louisville. It was written
by young woman who poisoned her.
self with laudanum in sensational way
recently. In the last agonies of death
the girl had scrawled her parting in
functions to her friends in this world,
on the pillow with lead penbil. This
pillow case is to be regularly recorded
and filed.
A yellow pine on the banks of the
Rogue River, Southern Oregon. con-
tanned, according to rough estimate,
about eighty thousand acorns, which
had been driven into its bark by the
California woodpecker. These acorns,
thus strangely stored, are not valued
30 much as articles of food direct as
for the worms which are afterward
found in the decaying portions of the
acorn kernels.
A Lucky Accident.
One of the greatest discoveries ever
made was the result of the purest acci-
dent. It was the year of 1876. The
citizens of Munich had just witnessed
the first triumphant performance OF
Mozart's opera, ''Don Juan," and the
theatre was deserted by all save one
man, Alois Sennefelder, who, after
making round of inspection in the
building to see that no sparks had ig'
nited anything combustible, retired to
his room to stamp the tickets of admis.
sion for the day following. When he
entered his apartments he had three
things in his hand-s polished whet-
stone which he had purchased for the
purpose of sharpening razors, q ticket
stamp still moistened with printing ink
and check on the treasurer of the
theatre for his weekly salary. As he
placed the latter on the table gust OF
wind swept it high up in his room and
then deposited it in basin filled with
water. Sennefelder dried the wet paper
as we'll as he could and then weighed
it down with the milestone upon which
he had before carelessly placed the
printing stamp. When he returned to
his room the following morning he was
astonished at seeing the letters printed
with remarkable accuracy upon the
dampened paper. A thought came to
him. He wondered whether by some
such means he could not simplify hie