Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1893 — SOMEWHAT STRANGE. [ARTICLE]

SOMEWHAT STRANGE.

ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS OF EVERYDAY MFE. Queer Facts and Thrilling Adventures Which Show That Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction. “Talking of strange things,” said Jarvis Walton of Livingston county, N. Y. “I never heard of a stranger or more inexplicable thing than the one that happened to William Coe and his uncle, Lewis Coe, in South Livonia, up in our county. AVill Coe was cuttin" wood one day, and his axe slipped, striking him on the top of his left foot, and cutting a deep gash four or five inches long. Ilis uncle Lewis was with him, and dressed the wound, bandaging it with his handkerchief. As soon as the handkerchief was bound on the foot the pain, which had been intense, left it, and immediately Will’s uncle, Lewis, was seized with a terrible pain in his left foot, at exactly the same spot where Will’s wound on his foot was. Lewis took off his shoe and stocking, and found a ridge on his foot exactly the same length and shape as the cut ou his nephew’s foot. Will Coe never had a return of the pain to his foot, but his uncle’s foot pained him continually until Will’s wound had entirely healed, •when it left him. The strangest part of the whole thing was that the cut ou Will Coe’s foot left not a trace of a scar, but a red seam remains oa his uncle’s foot to this day, just as, one would naturally supjiose, a scar would have been a reminder on Will’s foot of the wound made by the axe.”

Onk of the latest things in surgery is the employment of vegetable substances in abdominal operations. When a portion of the intestine has been removed something is required to keep the walls apart and hold the opposing ends together for some hours, or until the cut surfaces have become firmly agglutinated. For several years catgut rings and plates of bone, from which the salts had been removed by acid, were used for this purpose. These substances are usually quite hard, and in many cases not readily absorbed. To overcome this difficulty plates cut from raw white potatoes, turnips, parsnips and carrots were used, with the result that they held the ends of the intestines together long enough to allow a firm union of the ends, and then were acted upon by the digestive fluids and absorbed, so that all traces of them disappeared entirely. A man entered the police barracks in Melbourne, Australia, several weeks ago and asked the officer in charge if the police could tell him who he was. It was found that the man had completely lost his memory. The physicians examined him, tried to treat him, and hundreds of people came to see him, but the man could remember nothing before the day he entered the police station, and no one could identify him. In default of his real name, which he did not know, the keepers, who it is explained, had read “Looking Backward,” named him “Edward Bellamy,” and by that name he was known up to last reports, when his mind was still blank a 9 to his history. The only sign of returning memory he has shown is that he played many tunes on the barracks church organ after hearing the first few notes of each. At the Aquarium in Berlin there is a big gorilla whose habits are about as correct as those of most of his distant relatives. He gets up at Bin the morning, takes a bath, and uses soap without hesitation. When his toilet is completed'he takes a cup of milk, after which lie eats two loaves of bread, with Frankfort sausages aud smoked Hamburg beef, all of which he moistens with a glass of weiss beer. At 1 p m. he takes a bowl of soup, with rice and potatoes, and a wing of a chicken. He uses his knife and fork and his napkin like one of our own Four Hundred; but when he thinks that his keepers are not observing him lie discards the impediments of civilization and plunges his muzzle into the bowl, as if to give evideuce of the melancholy fact that even a gorilla can be a hog.

Two Americans in the employment of the government of British Columbia recently accomplished a feat hitherto deemed impossible by crossing the Selkirk mountains in the depth of winter. The object of the trip was to ascertain if it were possible to lay out a pack and cattle trail over the range from Golden to Kalso. The men traveled 150 miles on snowshoes, fifty miles over the wildest mountain country, where glaciers abounded, They found a pass at an altitude of 6,500 feet that is practicable for cattle and pack trains in summer. The thermometer was below zero during most of the trip, which occupied nearly a month. W. A. Fi.annigan of Lincolnton, Ga., has a curiosity in the shape of a pig. It is a sort of pet around the house, and stays with the dogs most of the time, even sleeping with them at night, and has developed some of the dogs’ characteristics. Mr. Flannigan says he was going home through the fields the other day and saw the pig chasing a rabbit for dear life, and apparently with as much earnestness as the best trained dog. Mr. Flannigan is undecided whether to fatten the pig for pork or train it for a fox hunter.

A Maxi*factu ring concern in Birmingham, England, drives something of a trade in crowns. They are real ones of solid gold, with cap of crimson velvet, incrustations of garnet, topaz, and other kinds of cheap but showy stones, and are supplied to the kings of Africa, of whom there are several hundred, at a highly satisfactory return of ivory and other merchandise. The time has gone’ by when an ancient plug hat, adorned with turkey feathers, sufficed to impart a halo of magnificence to Ethiopian royalty. It is not an uncommon thing to make a man eat his own words, or to cram them down his throat, but it is rather an unusual proceeding for a prisoner to eat the evidence of his guilt, and to do it right in open court in the bargain! Whaley, the Buffe lonian, raised a money order, and when arraigned in court picked up the order and ate it. The judge ordered him to suspend digestion at once and take an emetic, but the plan failed to work. A peculiar accident happened on the Bakersfield and San Miguel Railroad at Asphalto, Cal. The train was made up and ready to start for Bakersfield, when a young burro was seen rubbing himself on the switch. When the train started the shriek of the locomotive whistle frightened him and he jumped with.suoh force against the switch as to throw it open just as the train arrived. As a result the locomotive and four of the cars were ditched. The death of Lady Sydney recalls a remarkable incident in the career of her father, the first Lord Anglesey, the Duko

of Wellington’s intimate frier, i end companion. It was he who commanded the light cavalry at Waterloo, and who lost a leg by the very last shot fired at that memorable battle. The limb was buried with military honors, and later a monument was erected in its memory on the banks of the Menai St aits. A decree has been issued in Belgium forbidding any Belgian to capture or destroy fiugs, to consign them by any conveyance, to expose them for sale, or to buy or sell them, either whole or in part. Scientific men may buy them for experimental purposes, and in certain places, where frogs arc reared for the French market they may be exported to France. King Leopold is determined his subjects shall cease to be frog eaters. During the football season of 1892-3 in Great Britain there were twenty-six deaths on the field or resulting from football accidents, thirty-nine broken legs, twelve broken arms, twenty-five broken collarbones, and seventy-five other injuries. Football is much more generally played in England than here, and every village and hamlet has its team or teams, and seemingly its killed or injured. A French statistician has estimated that a man 50 years old has worked 6,500 days, has slept 0,000, has amused himself 4,000, has walked 12,000 miles, has been ill 500 days, has partaken of 36,000 meals, eaten 16,000 pounds of meat and 4,000 pounds offish, eggs and vegetables, and drunk 7,000 gallons of fluid, which would make a lake of 800 feet surface if three feet deep. The Eagle’s Nest is a celebrated rock 1,200 feet in height, among the Ivillarney lakes in Ireland. It is noted for the extraordinary effect of its echoes, and tho slightest whisper will be repeated a thousand times, clear and distinct, from the various projecting points of the cliff. Thk Great Pitch lake of Trinidad covers ninety-nine acres, and contains millions of tons of so-called pitch. This is in reality a mixture of asphalte and oil, which is continually oozing up through cracks and crevices beneath tho pressure of the strata of rock above. A petrified body, evidently the remains of an Indian, was unearthed near Hughes Springs, Texas. Bits of copper and earthen vessels were also brought to light.