Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1887 — FOR THE CURIOUS. [ARTICLE]

FOR THE CURIOUS.

Kansas mines annuall] about 6,000,000 tons of coal. Dueling among women is becoming fashionable in France. The electric light is now being used in the Scotch fisheries with great success. A violin, made for Louis XIV., has just been sold at Buda-Pesth for $3,590. The Japanese have lately been examining the German breweries with a view to native production. The Bulgarian government has this year given orders for 24,000 medals for the army, for “bravery.” A child was born in a Philadelphia patrol wagon while its mother was being taken to the almshouse. A new republic, called the Republic of Counani, between Brazil and French Guinea, has been declared. The “Melograph” has been invented, by which a person can improvise on a piano and have the music recorded. A California girl was recently cured by. faith, hut on the way home her horse ran away, and she is now worse than ever. Sir John Lubbock says that among a certain hill tribe of India it is a mark of respect and gratitude to put the thumb to the nose. Sir William Armstrong’s new gun to resist torpedo attacks is a thirty pounder and develops a muzzle velocity of 1,900 feet per second. Five thousand Protestants recently celebrated the edict of toleration of Louis X VI., upon a peak of the Cevennes mountains. The oldest law suit in Illinois has been on the docket forty-two years. It began about as 2 hog, and has .cost the principals $7,000. in Sublette, 11!., a swarm of bees have been making their home for the last fourteen years between the floor of one room and the ceiling of another.

R. 1., has a freak of nature that is attracting considerable attention. It is four kittens that are joined together at the abdomen by a ligature. The fashionable Swiss hotels now have American bare, presided over by handsome Swiss girls in native drees. This is said to account for the withdrawal of English patronage. The latest estimahTof the sun’s temperature at the surface is from 40,000 to 100,000 degrees centigrade, while near the center the temperature may easily be from 10,000,000 to 30,000,000 degrees, Dr. Jessup of the British Medical Association, says that the wearing of highheeled shoes so alters the center of gravity as to cause a return to the habit of “tailless apes, who walk on their toes.” A Pittsburg street car driver says that his horses suffer severely oil Sundays from the flies, because oh that day there are so few horses on the streets that those that draw the cars are about the only ones on which the flies can dine, : Microbes are responsible for many things. The latest theory of indigo is that of M. F. Alvarez, a member of the French Academy of Sciences, who says that it is a product of fermentation determined in a special microbe greatly resembling that of pneumonia. Mount Williamson, in Inyo county, Cal., towering above Independence on the southwest, is said to be the grandest peak in the United States, reaching an altitude of 15,000 feet, a large portion of the northern side being a sheer deenjfV Two of the three peaks are inaccessible. . and but two parties have ascended the other.