Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1892 — Wonderful, But True. [ARTICLE]

Wonderful, But True.

Two persons may be born at the same place and at tho same moment exactly, and yet, after fifty years have rolled around, they may both die at the same instant, and still one may be more than 100 days older than the other. I think I hear some one say “impossible,” and “How could such a state of affairs bo brought about?” but it is not impossible; it is simply an astronomical and geographical fact, very easily proven. A culm reflection shows this oddity turns on a very obvious problem in circumnavigation. Suppose now, that two persons were born at the same instant in Philadelphia, from whence a trip around tho world may easily be made in one year; if one of these persons constantly goes toward the west, in fifty years he wifi be fifty days behind the stationary inhabiants, if the other sails equally as fast toward the east he will bo fifty days ahead of them. One, therefore, will have seen 100 days more than the other, though they were bcu-n at the same instant, lived continually in the same latitude, and died together.