Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1893 — SOMEWHAT STRANGE. [ARTICLE]

SOMEWHAT STRANGE.

ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS OP kyeryday LIFE. Queer Facts and Thrilling Adventures Which Show That Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction. During the last Paraguayan War it was noticed that the men who had been without salt for three months, and who had been wounded, however slight, died of their wounds because they would heal. Tub Maharajah of Mysore has decided 1 , if possible, to put an end to marriages between children, or rather infants of his kingdom. He issued an edict recently forbidding girls under eight years and boys under fourteen to marry. In the future no man aged fifty or more dare wed a girl under fourteen. The edict has aroused much opposition in Mysore, but the ruler is said to be an energetic man and capable of executing regulations which he is pleased to promulgate. As extraordinary occurrence is reported from near Galashiels, Scotland. A boy named Brookie, the son of a shepherd at Buckholm, was out with the sheep, when he was bitten on the finger by an adder, lie became alarmed lest the bite should prove fatal, and resolved .to cut the finger off dose to the palm. This he attempted to do with his pocket knife, but as it would not cut through the bone he cut it away at the first joint. He then went to the nearest farmhouse, whence he was driven to Galashiels. Here a doctor amputated the remainder of the finger. Gkouge ANDEBSoxand William Hunt, farmers, who lived near Corning, Mo., were engaged in boring a well when their drill struck a rock and broke short off. It was necessary for someone to go down into tho well to dislodge the drill, and Anderson went. After he had reaohed the bottom, 160 feet deep. Hunt looked over the edge to see what he was doing, and by some misfortune missed his footing and tumbled headlong into the shaft. His head collided with that of Anderson and the skulls of both were crushed, killing them instantly. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts is to decide whether a creditor who invades a debtor’s bedroom and wakes him up early in the morning in order to present his bill is guilty of an assaytt. The aggravating party in the dispute is a milkman and the aggrieved person is his customer, who sajs that he forbade the milkman to invade his privacy, and was awakened by being shaken by the shoulder when suffering from a severe headache. The lower court entered judgment for the milkman, and the plaintiff appealed to the full bench of the Supreme Court. Sbveral wild turkeys that had a love for swallowing shining particles that had been shot by a burner on oue of the branches near San Diego, Tex., netted him quite a sum in gold, which he found in their craws, which they had picked up. In South Africa ostriches have been successfully employed in finding gold deposits. A drove of the birds are turned loose to feed in the territory where the precious metal is supposed to exist. They are then given an emetic and the ejecta carefully examined for nuggets, and if any are found the trail of the bird is followed until the diggings are discovered.

The full-rigged ship, the Harry Williams, met with a peculiar accident while parsing uuder the Brooklyn bridge recently. A sailor was at work near the top of the mainmast as the ship approached the structure. The mainmast was unusually high, and as the ship swept down the river a carpenter at work on the bridge yelled to the sailor, who slid down just in time to save himself. The foremast passed under safely, but tlic top of the mainmast struck the bridge and about six feet of the stiok was snapped off. It was said at the bridge entrance tiiat this was the first accident of the kind recorded since the bridge was erected. Lawyer Bunker, of Ellsworth, Me., recently had au unpremeditated contest with an angry bull on the Hancock county fair grounds at that place. He seized the angry beast by the horns, aQd, alter an exciting tussle, actually succeeded in downing the bull. Since then the young . farmers of the couuty have been practising at this hazardous wrestling, and most ' any average-sized man will now boast of his ability to upset any hull in the county. Competitive challenges have been the natural outcome, aud Bucksport has just issued a defiance to Ellsworth to match its star against any “rarsler” (wrestler) in the latter place, “horns holt, best two out of thee bulls.” Probably few men have had a more thrilling fifteen seconds or so than had the driver of a heavy load of giant powder in Oregon a few days ago. He was piloting a four-horse team drawing a wagon containing 3,0 )0 pounds of giant powder over a rough road into Tillamook. A rickety bridge spanning a nurrow ravine gave way under the load and the whole outfit was dumped down into the dry bed of the creek. There was no explosion, and the driver, horses, wagon and powder were hauled out all right. The driver has not recorded his sensations as he felt the bridge giving way and during the few seconds between then and the time the load landed safely again.

“ It was decidedly a grim ornament,” said u society young man in the New York Sun, “that I saw recently at the house of a well-known civil engineer whose career had some time been in the Rocky Mountains. It waa a necklace composed of the finger nails of a youug Sioux brave slain by a Ute warrior, who, with the scalp of bis victim, had taken this trophy of his prowess. Strange to say, this Dccklace was instrinsically very handsome. The characteristic flhapeliness of the Indian’s arm and hand, ideally perfect even to the finger tips, was illustrated in this barbarous memento. The necklace of ten pieces was in color a viial brown, suggesting more than anything elae a string of acorns. So removed in appearance was it from any forbidding suggestions of the savage deed it recorded that the genuinely gentle and refined woman to whom it was shown handled it lo giogly, and begged of the owner that if he ever gave it away it should be to her.” TnE Newcastle (England) Journal reports apathetic story of a dog, given in evidence before the Gateshead magistrates. A man over eighty, charged with keeping a dog without a license, did not appear, but the chief constable informed the Bench “that the old man had been at the court iu a terrible state of distieas,” aud that he lived with hie wife in a condition of abject poverty. On inquiries made, it appeared that the dog mus. be destroyed if the aummoai -vas pressed, as the old couple had no to pay for a license, but that the wife begged for the dog’s life because it

had morn than once saved her from being burned to death. She had fallen into the lire in a fit, and “ the dog had seized her, dragged her from the flames, and burying his nose in her lighted clothes, had extinguished the fire. To prove the truth of the woman’s statement, the obief constable got some old newspapers and set fire to them, this being done in the presence of other constables. On each occasion the newspaper was lighted in the middle of the floor. The dog rushed at it and extinguished the flame.” The magistrates, of couse, subscribed to pay for what the local reporter, with pardonable effusiveness, calls the “noble creature’s license.” It is a pity that the dog’s breed, or, at any rate, size and looks arc not mentioned. Mil. Mattox, of Mississippi, was housing his hens. The night was somewhat cloudy. He had visited his barns and was on the point of returning to his house when all at once he heard a peculiar hissing sound overhead, and at the same instant a luminous glow fell all around him, as if the moon had suddenly emerged from behind a cloud, chronicles the Chicago Post. He looked up and was almost paralyzed at the sight of a brilliant, fiery globe descending through the air with the speed of lighting, and shooting a comet-like tail far up into the heavens. So rapid was the descent that it was only visible for a second, but in that brief space, he says, he suffered an eternity of unspeakable terror. The fire ball struck the earth with a dull report, scarcely 300 yards from where he stood. It was Rome minutes before he could recover the use of his limbs, when, running hastily to his house, he aroused tho family and several laborers about th& place, telling them a comet had struck the earth, and they had only a few minutes to pray. In a short time the whole plantation was up and women and children were heard orying and supplicating heaven for mercy. They could not get closer than about thirty yards on account of the heat and noxious fumes of sulphur and gas which the stone emitted. The stone sizzled and steamed and shot out jets of steam or vapor from a thousand pores. By daylight it showed up a dull, dingy biuck, and was full of pores, which still •hot out jets of vapor of an offensive smell which almost stifled. The stone is evidently imbedded in the ground for some distance, and shows only about a foot above the surface. Mr. Mattox estimates it to be about the size of a hogshead.

A difficult mechanical feat just accomplished at Porta Costa, Cal., is described substantially as follows by eye-witnesses: On August 10, a locomotive went through the big ferry-boat and plunged pilot first into the waters of Carquinez Straits, the tender and cars remaining on the ferry-boat. The water was deep enough to cover the cab, but not enough to let the boat out of the slip. The locomotive stood practically vertical and its nose was deep in the mud. On the night of the 15th a large pair of shears made of 12x12-inch timbers crossed at the top was built up on the end of the boat and some large pulleys hung where the pulleys crossed. Tnen a diver spent several hours in fastening a numter of cables on either side of the frame under the boiler. Four engines were attached to the ropes, but could not start the locomotive, although the strain was so great that a cable nearly three inches in diameter was broken. Finding the appliances of insufficiiut strength, the shears were doubled in size, and a fifth engine taken on board. Ou the 17th anpther trial was made. It was hard to get the engines to pull exactly together, and, as their wheels would slip and revolve, the cables would snap and the tackle generally would be badly strained. Finally a simultaneous pull started the mass, and the cab slowly appeared above the water and the engine was gradually lifted until somewhat higher than the floor of the ferry-boat. Tackle from a steam dredger stationed in the front of the slip was then attached to the forward end of the locomotive, which was pulled out in this way. The shears were then swung slowly backwarij over the deck of the ferry-boat and the engine gradually lowered to the tracks it had left. When it was hauled to the neighboring roundhouse and the mud washed off it was found that but little damage had been done beyond the splintering of the cab by the cables.