Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1892 — Journalistic Flights. [ARTICLE]

Journalistic Flights.

The Chicago Herald has taken to soaring. Though it has no means of knowing anything about the matter, it gives in its issue of June 1, 66,627,842,237,075,266 as the number of human beings who have lived upon the earth since the beginning of time. When we consider the fact that about 150,000 persons are born every day, the units, tens and hundreds in the above big number are curiously learned. From all we know of the earth’s population since the “historic period,” the Herald’s number is only from five to ten million times too large. Again, it says, “to bury this vast number the whole landed surface of the globe, every inch of it, would have to be dug over 120 times.” The smallest knowledge of mensuration shows this statement, too, to be a hundred-fold absurdity. The surface of the earth would hold that big number even without being dug over once. In the same issue, the population of Japan is given as 237.000,000, or six times larger than it actually is. But in its issue of June 2, it indulges in verbal pyrotechnics in an editorial article in which we find the words, fulvid, cataphractic, cretinous, dissentaneous. lipicity, distomatic, and hl)iilitjr.—Pullman Journal.