Watertown leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1909-1911, 1909-02-12
VOLUME XIX
Items of Interest

More than one third Of the persons
admitted to the Pennsylvania Institu-
tion for the blind in the last eight
years, owe their affiiction to neglect
soon after their birth.
A new machine in large eastern
sewing machine factory takes in a
sheet of metal at one end, and, after
twenty y-eight operations, elects fin
ished bed plates. saving the work Of
thirty men.
Sulbhide pitch obtained in the pro-
cess of manufacturing sulphide cellu-
lose, is proving successful binder on
the making Of coal briquets in the
Rhenish WestphalIan coal fields.
A church organ with bamboo pipes,
built by a priest near Manila in 1893,
still is daily used, the bamboo having
been preserved by a process, the secret
of which died with the priest.
London medical authority gives the
credit for the decrease in the death
rate in that city to the fumes of gas
oline of automobiles, which he says
are antiseptic and act as health tonic.
A Glasgow ferry-boar practically
is floating elevator as it's deck with
full load of sixteen wagons may be
raised or lowered seventeen feet to
reach the differnet landings at which
the boat touches.
There is nearing completion for the
government at Newport News, Va,
vessel, the sole purpose of which will
be to destroy derelicts and other men
aces to navigation along the Atlantic
coast.
The 1850 square miles of phosphate
lands in Utah, Idaho and Wyoming,
recently withdrawn from entry by the
President order, are said tu constl-
tute the greatest known deposit of
phosphate in the world.
Experiments IN Sweden with using
buoys lighted with dissolved acety-
lene, stored In steel tanks, have
proved great success, the lIghJs be-
ing both brilliant and constant and
needing no attention for months at
time.
Thirty-five men are kept constantly
employed cleaning and painting the
great Forth bridge in Scotland. which
presents twenty-five acres of surface
to the action of the elements. Two
hundred and fifty tons of paint are
required to cover it.
From present indications the pro-
jected ail-Russian railroad through
Eastern Siberia will not be opened
for traffic b. fore 1912. 1t will tap
five cities on the way east from Mos
cow and develop vast tracts of agri-
cultural land.
According TO French authority,
20 per cent Of the cannibals eat their
dead to honor them, 10 per cent eat
their warriors to obtain their courage,
29 per cent eat human flesh to punish
their enemies, and only 80 per cent
because they enjoy its flavor.
A German army physician. who has
been experimenting with balloons,
denies the often repeated statement
that germs do not exist in the upper
atmosphere, and claims that he has
found thriving bacteria at elevations
of, more than 13, GOO feet.
DR. G. A. Dorsey of Chicago, who
recently returned from trip through
the Orient, found in one of the Sol
omon islands, tribe of hitherto un-
known natives. so uncivilized that
they wore no clothing and live in hol-
low tree trunks and holes in the
ground.
The Bavarian government has dis
continued the construction of self
contained motor cars on its state rail
roads, and, is building instead light
but powerful four wheeled locomotives
to haul single cars TO obviate the
difficulty of the entire car being idle
when its motor needs repairs.