Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1910 — THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW [ARTICLE]

THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW

The regulation step of the British army is 120 to the minute. Salmon, pike and goldfish are said to be the only fish that never sleep. Peanut cake seems to be supplanting cottonseed cake as the preferred food for Swedish cattle. , Last year the geological survey fixed prices on 2,598,621 acres of public coal lands and classified 10,857,572 acres as non-coal land. An all-rubber automobile-wheel has been patented, rigid at the center and with the hardness lessening gradually until the circumference is reached. The Paris Gaulois says that a British Catholic whose name is not stated has given the Pope fIOO.OQO with which to establish a Bible institution. There are twenty-one States In the Union whose combined business does not equal that of the New York post office, which is more than the post office business of Philadelphia and Chicago combined. It is already proposed, with the approval of the mayor, to re-establish the nlckel-in-the-slot machine in the cigar stores of San Francisco and to restore the recently suspended privilege of smoking In street cars. The oil palm is, perhaps, the greatest commercial asset In West Africa. On the palm the African has long depended for food, clothing, shelter, furniture, utensils, tools, weapons, ornaments, medicines and intoxicating beverages. On a ride' of 1,250 miles, at an average of forty-four miles daily, a Russian cavalry officer lost only six pounds in weight, while his horse—nearly twenty years old—lost fortyfive pounds. One day eighty miles was covered. During the last three years there has been a fairly steady increase in the quantity of natural gas used In this country for domestic purposes, a decrease In the quantity used for manufacturing purposes, and an increase In the average price. Here Is a fish story of the 1910 crop published by the St. James’ Budget: “While Mr. Mcßorie, an angler visiting Loch Tay, was fishing in the Killln waters with two rods, two salmon took the baits simultaneously and both were secured. The salmon weighed seventeen pounds each.” Mrs. Gabrielle Mulliner is reported to be the author of the proposed city ordinance requiring fire drilfc In small factories in New York. Mayor Gaynor is said to have told the City Federation of Women’s Clubs that if it would have an ordinance drawn up that would hold water he would use his Influence to put it through. Mrs. Martha C. Taller has given |25,000 to the New York University to endow a free clinic in connection with Bellevue Hospital Medical College. This is the first gift received to the endowment of the free clinic, and it Is hoped to increase the endowment to at least |IOO,OOO. The money given by Mrs. Taller is to establish a memorial to the late William H. Taller. “No one meets such various kinds of people as we do,” said a librarian. “You see that little old man over there? He is going through the encyclopedias, at a time. He comes in every day and begins where he left off the day before. He has read through an entire set and is beginning another. Pretty dry reading, some of it, one would say.”—New York Sun. Who Invented the postage stamp? A writer in Chamber’s Journal points out that the Inventor of the “adhesive postage stamp” was undoubtedly Rowland Hill. In 1837 he proposed the use of “a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash, which the buyer might, by the application of a little moisture, attach to the back of the letter.” Miss Mary Agnes Cunningham is the first woman to be appointed *a member of the school board of St Paul, Minn. She has taught In the schools of St. Paul for twenty-five years and is . the president of the Teachers’ Federation. During a fight she conducted for teachers’ pensions she saw a good deal of the mayor, who was so Impressed by her character and ability that he appointed her a member of the school board. Turkey’s war minister has just ordered forks for the convenience ftf* soldiers in barracks. The fork did not appear in Europe as a common table implement until the seventeenth century, though as early as the thirteenth century gold and silver ones were made for special purposes. The ordinary diner was only provided with a trencher, a napkin and a spoon. For knife he used his own, which he carried about. There was no second trencher, no second spoon. When the several courses came along he exercised his Ingenuity and mopped his trencher with his bread. From time to time various colonies of Jews have actually returned to the holy land. There are records of Jewish settlements there as early as 1170 and in the sixteenth century the city of Tiberias, “where only Jews were to dwell,” was rebuilt. But it was not until comparatively modern times that the founding of regular colonies began. In 1878 the ideas of Laurence Oliphant and the Earl of Shaftesbury took definite shape In the purchase of seven hundred acres of land by the Jews of Jerusalem and the foundation of the colony of Petah Tikwah. After the Russian persecution of 1881 large numbers of Jews emigrated and at the end of 1898 there were about five thou* sand Jewish colonists in Palestine.