Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1881 — Historical Brevities. [ARTICLE]

Historical Brevities.

Plato died at 81, pen in hand. The needle gun was patentei in 1831. • The history of iron ships dates from 1787. Coal gas for the purpose of lighting, was known ages ago to the Chinese. Pnotography was known to Leonardo de Vinci in the fifteenth century. Archimedes, born in Sicily 287, B. C. was the author of more than forty mechanical inventions. Silk first came from China, and the Chinese still have many important secrets connected with it unknown to Europeans. In 1855 the planet Neptune was discovered,by which the solar svstem was extended 2,000,000 miles beyond its former limits. According to common accounts tea was first brought into- England from Holland in 166*, and a pound then sold for sixty shillings. Home wm captured four times in sixteen years, and during that time 15,000.00 i humin beings perished by sword, pestilence and fomlne. <

Tbeidm of the kakfafcecope firet occurred to David Brewster in 1814, he was engaged in experimenting on the polarization of light by reflection from plates of glees. Over 8,000 victims were executed for witchcraft during the reign of the long Parliament. Barrington gives the whole number of those put to death in England on this charge as not less than 30,000. . In the time of Herodotus there was on the .Egean sea a community of "lake dwellers” who lived upon piles driven into the bottom the lake, and connected only by a narrow bridge with the land. The history of bells is one of the most interesting in the recital of inventions. They were first heard of about the year 400, before which date rattles were used. In the year 810 we hear of bells in the city of Bens, the army of Clothaire, king of France, having been frightened away by the ringing of them. In 660 the first peal of bells was rung in England at Croyland Abbey. Many yean ago it was estimated that there were at least 2,262 peals of bells, great and small, in England. It has been thought that the custom of ringing bells was peculiar in England, but the Cathedral of Antwerp, celebrated for its magnificent spire, has a peal of bells, 90 In number, on which is played every half hour the most elaborate music.