Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1909-10-28
ODD ITEMS OF INTEREST.


The flour mills Of Minneapolis grind
12O, 100000 bushels of wheat every
year.
During the year 1908 the 544,939
acres under tea in India produced
246, 722,551 pounds.
Austria is the country most lenient
to murderers A very small per-
centage of those convicted are
| executed.
In eighteenth century England the
| fashionable woman's headdress often
| had to be left untouched for weeks at
a time.
Mrs. Russell Sage gave $4,000 to
| Syracuse university on her last birth
day The money is to be used as an
endowment fund for the teachers
college.
The beauties of suburban life in
New Jersey seem to appeal to many
| persons having a plentitude of this
worlds goods, and in Morris county it
! is the boast of the inhabitants that
( seventy-five milliOnaires now make
their homes there.
Italy levies graduated income tax
as we'll as a direct tax on land and
houses. Small incomes are exempt
from taxation. The minister Of
finance estimates that the income tax
for this year will amount to about
$49, 100000, while the land tax will
bring in $36,OOOOOO
| The patent office is some $7,0OO,000
ahead on revenue from patents, nearly
81 ,000, 900 last year alone. Considering
the measureless multiplied millions OF
blessings and dollars from inventions,
and considering the silent tragedy and
despair Of poor inventors, this seems
| like seething the lamb in it's own
mothers milk.-New York Press.
| Natives of Papua are said to have
converted a Church of England
clergyman to recognition that there
| is something in the Witchcraft
practced by the magicians of New
Guinea" The Rev. Copeland King,
who has been laboring among the
Papuans for eighteen years, has told
a Sydney interviewer that he was once
striker with fever by Papuan
magician.
An iron cyclone cellar is a novelty
described in Popular Mechanics. 1t
says that a metal concern in one of the
| cyclone states of the west is manufac-
| turing the cyclone cellar of extra heavy
galvanized corrugated iron. 1t has a
cylindrical shape, and is provided with
| stairway, seats, shelves and bins. I'm
| der ordinary conditions it is used for
the keeping of fruits and vegetables.
| The whole is anchored soldly in the
| ground and thoroughly braced.
| 1t was the custom in medieval times
| to serve roast meat on a spit, and to
| pass it round the table for each guest
| to cut off what he liked. In France
| one still finds chicken livers and ba
| con served on small splits 1t is prOba-
| bic that many people continued to pre-
| fer fingers to table utensils even after
| these We're perfected and in general
use. For knives were certainly invent
ed at the period when Charles MI
| chose to butter his bread with his roy
| al thumb.
| France has done more to push for
ward the science of aerial navigation
| than any other country, and, although
| the last disaster assumed the masn1-
| tude of a national calamity, will con-
| tinue to do SO with as much enthusi-
assn and faith as before, yet the death
| list in the last year has found France
| the sufferer in every instance but one
| OF the seven killed during this period
| says Popular Mechanics, six We're
| Frenchmen, flying over French soil,
and all. commencing with NJ. Lefebvre
in a Wright aeroplane, We're killed dur
ing September.
Henry Sienkiewicz says that his in
spiration for Quo Nadis" came from
| the study of three famous masterpiece
/ Of fln n,,l-S f ooi
| tus, with whom of all, in the Latin
classics l am best acquainted. Then l
| was deeply influenced by Chateaubri-
and's Genie du Christianisme.' espec-
| tally by what he has written about the
| early Christian martyrs. But l owe
| most of all to the English Cardinal
| Wisemans 'Fabiola; the Church of the
| Catacombs an able and picturesque
story, which exercised over me a pow
| erful fascination from dawning boy
| hood"
Shortly after the restoration of the
| Stuarts to the throne of England, some
royalist brought out book to throw
ridicule on the late usurper,' oliver
Cromwell, for the simplicity of his
household. When alone with his wife
Cromwell was said to have dined on
eggs and Stops" Only G1,000 $4,000
was spent in entertaining the French
| ambassador, of which Mistress Joan
| Cromwell managed to save 5000
| ($1 ,000). For all that, some excellent
dishes, such as warden pie, sack posset
| and Dutch pudding, were known in the
| Cromwell household, and all the rem
nants were given to the poor after each
meal
| In view of the serious delays occa-
stoned in the ordinary telegraph service
during the severe magnetic storm on
September 25, says the Engineer, it is
| interesting to find w. H. Eccles writing
to the Electrician to say that although
he was working a wireless telegraphy
station in Surrey between the hours of
go and P. NJ. on that day he did not
know that a storm was in progress, so
entirely absent was any sign of unusu-
| al disturbance The disturbances set
UP in ordinary wire telegraphs are, OF
course, due to induction caused by the
| fluctuations of the magnetic field in
closed by the telegraph circuit which