Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1916 — SCRAPS [ARTICLE]

SCRAPS

Forty-one of the states have state geologists or similar officials. The tzar of Russia rides a bicycle, i lays tennis and bowls ninepins. He is also an excellent swimmer. New York City has the largest electric sign in the world. It is 261 loot long and contains 3,916 lamps. Caracas, capital (ft Venezuela, is tt have a huge new bull ring, but ( astro's hat-tossing days are past. Fraternities of the University of California have been prohibited from building houses costing more than ? 2 5,0 00.

Strasburg, capital of Alsace, was annexed by Germany in 1 870, taken by France in 1681 and recaptured by Germany in 18 70. The French have a process of making a sweet flour from fried sugar beets. The substance when complete contains 82 per cent of pure nutriment.

Telephone poles of glass molded over a heavy wire net are being made in Europe. These poles are rarely broken, will neither rot nor rust, and are impregnable to insects, Mrs. Mary K. Rindge of Los Angeles is said to be the first woman railroad president in California and untie' of- the three women executives of railways in the United States. A notable gift to the University of California is the library of about 6,000 volumes representing France’s contribution to civilization, which formed (tart of the French government exhibit at the Panama-Pacific

exposition. India's rice crop of this year is estimated at 76,792,000 acres, slightly in excess of the acreage of the year before. The total yield is expected to be 21„ per cent greater than last year. Estimates for both area and yield are the greatest on record.

Here is a short and easy way of determining the height of a Zeppelin. A piece of wood two inches long and an quarter of an inch wide would completely blot out a Zeppelin it it were 7,000 feet away and the piece of wood held about two feet ■ rum the eyes. ..‘•Recently 1 have been investigating ttie lives ot 4,046 American millionaires,” says Dr. Russell H. Conwell. "All hut 2u of them started life as poor boys, and all but 40 of them have contributed largely to their communities. But, alas! not one rich man's son out of 17 dies rich.”

A huge bowlder having To acres of surface above the ground from which granite is being taken for building the new Oklahoma state capitol, is said once to have been a favorite" bandit rendezvous. It is a solid mass towering above the tree toi»s and formed of an excelleu', grade of stone. Professor G. G. Hertzog of California, Pa , father of Dr. W. S. Hertzog, principal of the Southwestern State Normal school at California and himself a member of the faculty for 5u years, will retire after this year. He was the guest of honor at a banquet given by the alumni of the institution in Pittsburg. A New York judge who refused a man a divorce sought because "his wife was imperfect in everything,” said to the fellow: “If you are a perfect human being, or think you are, watch your step. A perfect human being," continued the justice, still bruising the head of the nail, ' would be an intolerable nuisance.”

Russia and Serbia, also Austria, may allow young women to light in their armies, hut Canada will not, although, according to a recruiting officer in Winnipeg, several have applied, and two could hardly be kept from jpining by force in response to a call for “stenographers for the second service unit of the 19th battalion.”

Public school teachers in New South Wales are asking that written home work he abolished in all primary schools. They also ask that no school he built on or close to main traffic arteries; that a domestic science college he established and that all reports concerning any teachers be open for inspection by the teacher concerned.

The United States bureau of navigation reports 48 sailing, steani, gas and unrigged vessels of 26,408 gross tons built in the United States and officially numbered during January, 1916. The largest steel steamers included in these figures are: Santa Barbara, of 6,621 gross tons, built at Philadelphia, and the Eurana, of 5,915 gross tons, built at San Francisco, Cal. „ Professor Roscoe Pound, who has been appointed dean of the law school of Harvard university, is a native of Nebraska. Hte was admitted to the bar in 1890, and for several years practiced at Lincoln. He is also well known as a botanist, having been director of the botanical survey of Nebrasba, 1892-1903. .He

has written many monographs and articles for European and American botanical journals.

The first extraction of quinine from the bark of the tropical cinchona tree by two French chemists in 1 820 marked an epoch in the medical world, and it was Sir Clements Markham of England, burned to death recently in his 8 6th year, who in 1852, after a visit to .ieru, persuaded the British government to plant and raise the drug in India at a time when malaria was seriously harassing the population there. - '

Each man-of-war is built on paper before a single plate of steel is forged, Nat only are length and breadth of ship decided, but the naval constructor can tell to an ounce how much water she will displace when her armor and guns are mounted on her, how many times her propellers will revolve in a minute with a given pressure of steam, and how many tons of coal an hour must be consumed to attain a certain rate of speed. An officer in a western reserve bank recently got a package from a Japanese firm and with it the following terse information: “We sorry that we can not prepay the duty, for which please accept, though if we could do so without very much trouble and waste time on mutual part we did so,” all of which may be somewhat politely jumbled, though here's a venture that he had no trouble understanding that phrase, “for which please accept.”

According to the naval critic, Hector G. Bywater, as far as building ways and construction plants are concerned, there is no reason why Germany could not have 25 battleships or battle cruisers under construction at one time. Though lie admits that this figure may be astonishing, lie Shows that, an examination of the various yards, governmental and private, in Germany, justifies the estimate. In fact, he says that, simultaneously, a program including light cruisers, destroyers and submarines, could be put through since there are many German yards which, although they can not build capital ships, are well equipped to produce the lighter craft. He estimates the total working force in all these yards at 100,000 men.

The remarkable measurements of the radiation of stars made by Dr. Coblentz, of the bureau of standards, with his new thermo-electric apparatus in connection with the Crossley reflector at the Lick observatory, have brought out an interesting relationship between total radiation and optical brightness. It appears that the eye is a poor judge of stellar radiation. For example, in the “dipper” the yellow star Alpha, one of the “pointers,” is somewhat fainter to the eye than the blue star Epsilon, in the handle; yet the total radiation emitted by the former is nearly twice as great as that of the latter. It is found that in general red stars emit two or three times as much total radiation as blue stars of the same photometric magnitude. Measurements of stellar radiation transmitted through an absorption cell of water reveal the fact that in the spectral region to which the eye is sensitive blue stars have about twice as much radiation as yellow’ stars and three times as much as red stars.