The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-05-09
OUT OF THE ORDINARY

ll0 I6SoI SllSle " III llOiI III TIC
world is Fortress Monroe. 1t has already
cost over $4,000, 600.
In 1857 the Empress Catherine received
a Russian peasant woman who had fifty
seven children, all living.
France is the only European country
which has to-day fewer able-bodied men
than 1t had thirty years ago.
In Great Britain the daily cost of a la
borer's food is 45 per cent. of his wages; in
the United States, 80 per cent.
The Brazilian government has a stand
ing offer of a prize of $l50,0N for the dis
covery of a sure remedy for yellow fever.
Switzerlar ! has as many as 557 savings
banks. in which 1,196, $40 persons. or more
than a third of the total population, are de-
p%ositors.
Losses by fire in the United States and
canada during March were almost 100000 900
less than they were the corresponding
month of 1896.
> The willow is one of the. most adaptable
of plants. A willow switch stuck in the
wet ground will almost Invariably take root
and become a tree.
DR.. De Rienzi says that 4 per cent. of the
population of Naples die annually from i'm
poVerishment of the blood, caused by the
lack of meat as food.
Augustus Perowe. an eleven-year-old
Bath (Me.) boy has $45 to his credit in the
bank, every cent of which he earned him
self with his flock of fifty hens.
Aristotle mentions a woman who had five
living children at one birth four times sue
cessively; Menage tells us of one who had
twenty-one children in seven years.
Fortune telling and astrology have be-
come such nuisanceS in Milwaukee of late
that the police have been compelled to take
energetic measures to abate the nonsense.
Telephones ere in common use on Swed-
ish farms, and even in Finland. A traveller
calls at Il farmhouse, and if his language is
not understood he rings up an interpreter.
Tiberius made the edict forbidding men
over sixty and women over fifty to marry,
but so many petitions We're presented
against 1t DIV WIDOWS that If was soon ra-
pealed.
Since the beginning of this century no
less than ffty-two volcanic islands have
risen out of the sea. Nineteen of that num-
Der have since disappeared, and ten are now
inhabited.
Argentina's population. according to the
double it's population in 1869, the date of the
t1rst census. The city of Buenos Ayres has
$685. $50 inhabitants.
A horse can live twenty-five days without
solid food, merely drinking water; seven
teen lays without either eating or drinking.
and only five days when eating solid food
without drinking.
Alcohol insanity is twice as common in
france now as fifteen years ago, and the
number OF persons p.n1CI Under restraint
on account of it has increased % per cent.
in the last three years.
In 1896 emigrants from Italy numbered
BOG, 093, the greatest on record. More than
$4,000 came to this country, Z, 1000 went to
Argentina and the most of the remainder
to Brazil and Uruguay.
A copper pan, said to the largest ever
made from one piece of metal, has been
turned out at Swansea. England, 1t, is
twelve feet four inches in diameter, three
teet three inches deep and weighs two tons.
Two thousand bales of cotton were raised
on one plantation in Oglethorpe county,
Georgia, and were sold April IL for $4,000.
This is the largest cotton transaction from
any single plantation that has been known
in Georgia for many years.
There are now about nine hundred camps
OF the United Confederate Veterans, and it
Is expected that the reunion in Nashville
this summer will see assembled more ex-
Confederates than have been gathered at
any one time since the war.
During the reign of Henry VIII II. 400
persons were legally executed in England.
the larger portion of whom were guilty of
no ofense worse than misdemeanor. In
were hanged for asking aims.
Two gangs of workmen have just begun
digging in Colorado the longest tunnel
which man ever attempted to construct.
The main bore will be twenty miles long,
and connecting with this are subsidiary tun-
nels, with a total length of thirty miles.
The most scientific forester in Europe
says that the Oldest trees in northern Eu-
rope are the pines of Norway and Sweden,
ana that these are not known TO live more
than 90 years. G~ermany'S oldest oaks
lived only a little more than three hundred
years.
Athens, twenty-five years ago a squaIid
Turkish village of huts and ruins, has be-
- IN AhtAbbltdAllS, a CiIl6
of intellectual life, the seat of a great uni
Verslty, an influence to be reckoned within
the councils of the nations. Factories hum
and smoke in the haunts of idyllic tradition.
According to an old custom, in the Dutch
village of Katlyk, the two church bells have
been rung for centuries past, without inter-
mission, day and night, from the 21st to the
18th of December every year. No reason
IS given for the custom, but so far all eff
forts TO stop the maddening noise have
proved futile.
William Schenck. of Pine Grove Wis
has just escaped the monotony Of never
making a mistake. He has been town
treasurer for nineteen years. and his only
error during that time was returning a lot
on which taxes had been paid. He is
eighty-three years old. and the townsmen
intend to keep him in office for life. He was
born in New Jersey.
An explorer says that the Missouri's
source is at the crest of the Rockies, 5000
feet above the sea level, just within the
boundary of Montana. The stream is two
feet wide and two inches deep, its water
coming from melted snow. The source is
4,22l miles from the Gulf of Mexico and .
$40 miles from its confluence with the Mis-
sissippi, making the river the longest UNI
broken current in the world.
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