Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1875 — ITEMS OF INTEREST. [ARTICLE]

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

The original Independence Day, July 4, 1776, was on Thursday. Religious disturbances are reported in Crete, being fomented by certain indiscrete parties.— St. Louis Times. If Brigham Young wore an additional “ weed” on his hat every time he lost a wife or mother-in-law, it is estimated his hat would * ve to be twenty-seven feet high. A Protestant church has been built at Smithfield, London, to commemorate the martyrs burned there, and the Catholics intend to build one at the Tower to commemorate others. Farewell, for one year or thereabouts, to the startling cracker, the annoying torpedo, the detonating Chinese bomb, the impaling rocket, the sight-destroying Roman candle, the fizzing pin-wheel, the suicidal pistol, the holocausting cannon, the necropolitan shotgun. The district in Kentucky known as Trosper’s Chapel has sixty children and eighty-two dogs. Allowing all the dis tricts in the county (fifty-two) to average this and there are 4,264 dogs in the county ; allowing each one pound of bread per day, they consume 1,555,360 pounds of bread per year. In some ginseng root received at a store in Nashville, Tenn., the other day, a piece was found that had a bullet imbedded entirely in it. It had either been shot into it while growing, or the plant had grown near the bullet and enveloped it as it grew, completely covering and hiding it. The ball was not discovered till the root was broken in two.

There is a large and dangerous rock in the harbor of Victoria, British Columbia and it is intended to construct acofler. dam ten feet square over the center of the rock. A shaft will then be sun? to the depth of twelve feet, and four headings or drifts driven from the shaft. A large quantity of giant-powder will be placed in the shaft-headings and the whole exploded by electricity about Aug. 1. On being asked by one of his fair daughters why the bulldog’s nose is placed so far behind his mouth, the very reverend gentleman discovers another instance of the merciful consideration ever shown by —shall we say “Nature?” —to the humblest of her creatures, and replies: “My love, it is to enable him to breathe more comfortably while he is hanging on to the nose of the bull!” — Punch. Recently, while workmen were engaged in making repairs in the wheel-pit at a pottery in Bennington, Va., one of their number, while feeling under a decayed plank came in contact with a slimy, slippery something, which proved, after a somewhat protracted struggle, to be an enormous eel. Its length was six feet, seven and three-fourths inches, and it weighed nine pounds and seven ounces. A Boston gentleman is the happy possessor of a miniature steam yacht, seventeen teet long and forty-two-inch beam. Her hull weighs about 100 pounds. She is propelled by a steam boiler weighing only forty-eight pounds. The cylinder is 1% inches, and the stroke 2% inches. The propeller is four-bladed, and is placed under the boat, two feet from the stem. One gallon of water fills the boiler, and as it condenses it is only necessary to supply the waste. The boat draws twenty-four inches of water, which carries her propeller clear. She cost about SSOO, and is rated at half-horse power. Her owner recently made a voyage with her from Boston to Portland. .

A theory of the Boston drug-store explosion is that it was caused by the vapor of ether. Several bottles of ether were kept in the rear of the store, and the sudden breaking of any one of them by falling, or by pressure, would, by the ignition of the air-mixed vapor, be sufficient to produce the disaster. The vapor of ether, when mixed with atmospheric air in the proportions of one part of ether to six or eight of air, affords a very powerful and dangerous explosive agent. On one occasion, known to the editor of the Boston Journal of Chemistry, in 1859, by the leakage of a retort, the air-mixed vapor traveled over a space of more than fifty feet in contact with the furnace fires, and an explosion occurred which lifted the building from its foundation and leveled a brick wall of great strength even with the ground, though fortunately circumstances prevented any serious calamity. An English medical journuPhas accomplished what has always been thought an impossible task—Numbering the hairs of the head. It announces that there are from 160,000 to 200,000 hairs in a lady’s head, and then computes their value by relating an incident which it says happened to Mme. Nilsson during her residence in New York city. She was at a fancy fair, and an admirer asked her the price of a single hair from her head. She said ten dollars, “and in a few moments the Swedish songstress was surrounded by admirers anxious to buy a hair at the same rate.” The proceeds were given to the fair. At this rate the value of Mme. Nilsson’s hair is $2,000,000,