Huntsville gazette., 1894-05-19
OF GENERAL INTEREST.


John Jacob Astor's new ninety-foot
yacht will be propelled by electricity,
and will mark an era in bodybuilding.
-Danesfeld house, the Scott Muir
rays family seat, between NARROW and
Henley, which is one of the most at
tractive places in the valley of the
Thames. in England, has been let for
six months to Mr.. William K. Wander
bilt
In somewhat speculative conclu.
sion of recent paper, MIR. Preece men,
toned the effects of an aurora on tele-
phone circuits, and stated that it was
not wild dream to say that we may
hear on this earth thunder storm in
the sun.
An English paper tells of a woman
who appeared at recent fancy ball re-
splendent with small electric lights,
supplied with a current from battery
concealed in mock hand organ her
husband carried as a part of his dis
guise as an organ grinder.
Sometimes" said New York
citizen, you drop penny in the slot
of a candy machine and it doesn't
work; you go on and leave your penny
behind. 1t is not unusual to see small
boys try the machines that are within
handy reach as they pass along; it
costs nothing to try and sometimes
they get returns: it may be that the
pull they give is just the one that was
needed to make the machine work. +"
The Horace Greeley statue commit
tee in New York has issued an appeal
for subscriptions to enable it to COM
plete the Horace Greeley statue. About
twenty five hundred dollars is required,
Oliver Sumner Teall has practically as
sumed the labor of raising the money.
Mr.. Teal proposes to ask two hundred
and fifty of those who made their for
tunes by Mr.. Greeley's advice, go
west, young man." to contribute ten
dollars each toward completing the
fund
Though the petrol is swift, the
frigate bird is far swifter. Seamen
generally believe that the frigate bird
can start at daybreak with the trade
winds from the coast of Africa and
roost the same night upon the Ameri-
can shore. Whether this is fact has
not yet been conclusively determined;
but it is certain that this bird is the
swiftest of winged reatures and is
able to fly, under favorable conditions,
two hundred miles an hour.-Our Dumb
Animals
There is an exceedingly able woman
In Boston who can report speech de-
livered rapidly in German, she first
translating the speech into English
and then recording it in stenographic
characters. Such celerity of thought
is only approached by the tradition re-
specting Kossuth, who is said to have
thought in Hungarian, translated into
Latin, and retranslated and uttered at
a rapid rate the choicest English, born
of study of the Bible and Shakespeare.
Boston Congregationalist.
The thinnest iron sheet in the
world has lately been rolled in Swan
sea in Wales. 1t is 25 centimetres long
and IA wide. Its thickness is exactly
.0052 millimetre. One may get an idea
of this thickness" by comparing it to
that of silk paper, which is ordinarily
.02 millimetre thick. Some iron manu-
factures have advertised that they
make visiting cards of thin iron plates.
Krupp has manufactured such of the
thickness of .04 millimetre. The
longest steel chip is 7915 metres long
and was turned in New York.
"A small boy stood on the sidewalk
with his feet well apart, so that he
might the better receive ball that
another boy was about to throw to
him. One Of his feet happened to rest
on little mound of coal, but he didn't
mind it, if the coal didn't He was =
little surprised, however, when that
foot suddenly went down through the
sidewalk, but his surprise gave way t.
amusement when he discovered, which
he did instantly, that he had been
standing over u coal hole, and that
somebody h,d just pulled the coal
down from undernea tn.
Mr.. Bruce, o. the Dundee Antarc-
tic whaling fleet, describes the whole
of the district sou tn of so degrees south
latitude as strewn with cebergs, which
become very numerous south of 81 de-
grees The base of the bergs was
colored pale brown by marine organ
isms and other bro IN streaks were seen
beyond the water level No luminous
glow was observed Clothed in mist
they raise their mighty snow-clad
shoulders to a stately height or shine
forth brilliantly in the sun. Although
they are of the purest white vet they
glow with color. The crevices exhibit
rich cobaltic blue ard everywhere are
splashes of emerald green.
During the recent heavy gales in
Chicago, says the Scientific American,
when the wind attained a velocity as
high as eighty-four miles an hour.
observations were taken on the vibra-
tion of two tall office buildings-the
Monadnock, 1s2 feet high, and the
Pontiac, 175. A plumb-bob suspended
from the sixteenth floor of the former
and hanging down to the second
floor traced circle Just one
half inch in diameter in one case.
and in another an ellipse seven-six-
teenths by three-eighths of an inch.
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