The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-04-27
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

80 died subsequently of wounds received
in battle-3C99 were invaded on account
of wounds received by sword or bullet. and
50, $50 were invaded from cholera and other
diseases contracted during the campaign.
In this war twenty-five battles were
fought altogether, and the toal expendi-
lures of ammunition now works out at
S6iI shrapnel shell, 1,761 common shell and
twelve caseshot. China lost II, 100 sailors
and soldiers, and, considering the terribly
expensive nature of the shells, it will be
seen that Japan had to pay pretty dearly
for every Chinaman killed.
"A manuscript has been discovered In
Venice that is said to give the true MIS-
tory of Othello. 1t was found by Cesare
Augusta Levi, an italian historian in the
archives of a patrician family of Venice
That Othello and Desdemona-who real
name was Palma--really lived is said to be
established. Otheno's insane jealousy is
also said TO be historic He did not Kill
his wife, however, but less POLITICALLY,
beat her brutally. Levi found the bap-
tismal certificate of their son, and conjec-
lures that Shakespeare obtained the
groundwork of his tragedy from the We
netian ambassador in London. The Shakes
peare students have hitherto believed that
the material came from a novel by an
Italian, Giraldi Cinto, who lived between
1904 and 1873.
The Newtonian law of gravitation, that
everybody in the universe attracts every
other body with force varying directly
as the mass and inversely as the square
of the distancey is questioned by Prof
Fl. Seeliger of Munich, who is the first to
offer evidence that the law must be inex-
act or not universal. This has arisen from
an attempt to extend the law mathemati.
aa1Txr - G.,sE O.
forced to assume either that the sum to-
tai of the masses of the universe is infin-
itely great, in which case Newtons law
undertakes the attractive forces, or that
the Newtonian law is strictly, exact, in
which case the infinite spaces of the uni
verse cannot be filed with matter of finite
density. He is forced to conclude that
Newton's great law is inexact
Clement Wragge, the government me-
teorologist of Queensland, Australia, often
called Indictment Wragge," and "Wct
Wragge, is an odd genius. This Is one of
his weather predictions: What grand
meteorological opera is in progress! All
the people of Australia and New-Caledonia
are the audience. Yet not all can hear
alike the great performance in it's tout en-
semble Those in advance between Bun
daberg and Ballina will enjoy the stirring
! music. The sea, in sympathy, adds it's
stentorian bass to the whirring of the
wind, anon roaring around some cavernous
bluff, then flashing the cliffs in angry tones
with supernal cascades of majestic beauty,
while modulating the sonata in turn to the
| Kissing, seething notes of babblng foam.
But our friends in New-Caledonia occupy
| special fauteuils in the theater of King
Aeolus There, under their eyes, will
Sana, the storm empress of the Pacific,
soon perform her marvellous eVolutions and
| dance her widest step"
! -Lipphcotts Magazine says: In the
Persian gulf the divers have a curious
way of opening the season. They depend
| implicitly upon the shark conjurers, and
will not descend without their presence.
To meet this difficulty, the government is
! obliged to hire the charmers to divert the
attention of the sharks from the feet. AS
| the season approaches vast numbers OF
natives gather along the shore and erect
| nuts and tents and bazars. At the or
| perfume moment-usually at midnight, so
| as to reach the oyster banks at sunrise.
the fleet to the number of eighty or one
hundred boats, puts out to sea. Each of
these boats carries two divers. a steers
man and a shark scharmer, and is manned
| by eight or ten rowers Other cOniurers
remain on shore, twisting their bodies and
mum bling lamentations to divert the
sharks. In case a man-eater is perverse
enough to disregard the charm and attack
diver an alarm is given and no other
diver will descend on that day The power
of the conjurer is believed to be heredi-
tary, and the efficacy of his nominations
to be wholly independent of his religious
faith.
For good many years after 1858, says
the Engineering Magazine, the rate of
mile in forty-four seconds remained an
absolute record Nor is there certainty
| as to the time when that record was first
! broken. In 1870 the late Patrick Stirling
brought out on the Great Northern Rail
way the first of those splendid eight-foot
/ singles" which have since won world
| wide celebrity. Phenomenal velocity was
soon claimed for these newcomers, but no
| authentic accounts exist of any speed ex-
| ceeding seventy-five miles an hour during
their earlier days. Their author reported
a trial run of fifteen miles in twelve min
utes with sixteen coaches, but the time
was admittedly taken in very loose fash
Ion, and on an attempt being made to re-
peat the performance, it proved imprac-
| ticable with such load. But, with new
| boilers, increased steam pressure and cyl
inders enlarged by boring out, these en-
| gines improved upon this maximum. Test
ing one down a long bank of one in 200,
| III 1900, l. ODldlucu d SHSeu VI elSHIy niles
an hour. The driver maintained that this
was the best it could do. However, on
giving it another notch, SIS was reached.
"A young Londoner, Arthur Chalk by
name, has applied for a patent on a pro-
| jectile which he, with the modesty of all
inventors, says is destined 10 revolution
ize warfare" says the New York Times.
| Through some device which Mr.. Chalk as
| yet refuses to explain, his improved mis-
siles, after moving for a ways in a straight
! line, according 10 the orthodox hablt-of
course no bullet or shell does move in a
straight line, but never mind that-Will
turn of a sharp angle and go up or down,
to the right or left, just as may have been
determined beforehand by the gunner us
ing them. In other words, Mr. Chalk as
| serts that soldiers armed with his wea-
/ pom will be able to shoot around a corner
or down behind parapet and so destroy
enemies who would be beyond the reach
of other guns. There is" he says. mo
doubt about the accuracy of aim. If you
want to hit somebody behind the corner
of a mountain you would find the dis
lance, and fix your bullet to alter its
| 1T a IN mo