The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1896-08-16

the well about one hundred feet from the
bottom. A fash of lightning cut the cable
and the tools were lost in the hole.
The piles of old London bridge, driven
e es 1n n nund edn YEARS before before ,S were new Hoq hr;ds 20
was erected.
Bread as a daily article of food is used
by only about one-third of the 1.5oo.OOo.eo
people that constitute the present popuia-
ton of the earth.
1t may interest those who love 10 COM
pare man with monkeys to know that the
latter frequently get horribly seasick when
taken on the ocean.
India rubber has been generally consid-
cred absolutely water tight. but expert
ments with a Theoretically sealed rubber
bottle or water show that IL Is not.
A high grade sloo bicycle sells for 800
are now 1900 wheels in the city. each sub
ject TO an annual tax of S., payable in
monthly installments.
A ton of Atlantic water. when evapo-
rated. yields eighty-one pounds OF salt; a
ton OF Pacific water, seventy-nine pounds;
the water of the Dead sea more than twice
as much-1s1 pounds to the tor.
There seems at first to have been a fool
ish notion among coffee drinkers that the
coffee should be taken scalding hot: and
It's enemies naturally made great fun OF the
rueful faces of the suffering enthusiasts
A collector of bad debts who lives in
a New Jersey town drives a horse over
which is thrown a sheet bearing this in
scription: This horse stops only in front
of houses whose inmates are bad pay"
There is a man and his wife in Jasper.
Fla. who have twenty-nine children,
twenty sons and nine daughters, and be-
sides they have sons-in-law and daugh-
ters-in-law TO the number of twenty-six.
The Sultan of Turkey not only has a rigid
censorship of the press, but he has ordered
that no newspapers be published until the
afternoon. SO that the censors will not have
to forego their morning nap In order TO
supervise them.
The largest proportion of single persons
is found in Ireland and Scotland, and the
smallest in the United States. In Ireland
81 per cent, in Scotland 60 per cent, but in
the United States only SO per cent. are in
that condition.
The greatest depth, writes Prof. Seeley.
in his STORY of the Earth at which
earthquakes are known to originate, is
about thirty mics. 1t has also been calcu-
lated that a heat sufficient TO melt granite
might occur at about the same depth.
Liverpool receives some curious cargoes
at times, cargoes of turtles and other live
loads OF bones from battlefields, of human
mummies from the Egyptian tombs. and of
dead cats from the cat cemeteries OF the
same country.
The game of billiards. it is said. was in
vented by a London pawnbroker, named
William Kew. 1t is further stated that the
name given to the game Was derived from
Bills yard" because his first effort with
the game was with his yardstick and the
three balls which hung in front of his place
of business.
An army surgeon suggests that where
fear Of the seemingly dead being buried
alive exists, a bottle OF chloroform be
buried with the corpse, in order that its
fumes may prevent a return of conscious
ness and a realizing sense of the horrors
of being immured IN a coffin beneath the
ground.
Halcyon days was a name %anciently
given to seven days before and the same
number after the winter ~Soistice, when
the halcyon. induced by the beauty of the
weather, laid her eggs in nests built in
the rocks close by the brink of the sea. The
halcyon, or alcedo, is in ornithoiogy a
kingfisher, a genus of the GLASS ayes, Or
der picae.
The last time a British soldier was shot
for disobedience of orders is believed to
have been during the month of April. 1860,
when a private of the Fifth Bengal Regi-
ment was court-martialed and shot for dis
obeying the orders OF a Lanes corporal by
refusing, with two others, to take a COM
rade to the guard room. The one who was
shot was on duty at the time.
Pepys, in his Memoirs records an ex-
treordinary instance of mild weather dur
ing the winter season in England. Writ
ing under date. Jan. q. 1861, he says: 1T
is strange what weather we have had all
this winter: no cold at all: but the ways
are dusty, and the flies fly up and down
and the rose bushes are full of leaves;
such a time of the year as was never
know in this world before here"