Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1892 — SOMEWHAT CURIOUS. [ARTICLE]

SOMEWHAT CURIOUS.

Wars during the last thirty-three years have cost 2,500,000 men and $3,000,000,000. A railway in the Argentine Republic has one stretch of 211 miles without a curve or a bridge. Fifty-one metals are now known to exist. Four hundred years ago only seven were known. The mean annual temperature of the earth is fifty degrees Fahrenheit; the average rain-fall is thirty-six inches. ; Java is said to be the region of the globe where, it thunders oftenest, having a thunderstorm on 97 days of the year. The total wages of Great Britain for 1890 was £48,000,000, or an average of only £56 10s per capita for the number employed. There is reported to be more divorces granted in the United States than in all the rest of the Christain world’put together. It is a matter of record that $19,570 were coined in 1804, only eight samples are known to exist, and those that are in good condition are valued at SI,OOO each. A woman in Bucksbort, Me., w-hile feeding a small pig, dropped in the pen a roil of money—s2o in gold coin and SSO in notes. The coin was found subsequently near the mangled remaius of a $lO note, but it was evident that the pig had swallowed the rest of the money. . From recent investigations it has been found that the average speed of transmission of earthquake shocks is very nearly sixteen thousand feet per second. ' • It has been over 1,500 years since the rule was adopted which makes Easter the first Sunday after the full moon after the sun crosses the equinoctial line. By this arrangement of things Easter may come as early as March 22 or as late as April 25. The Edgar Thomson steel-work 3 claim to have broken the record for making steel rail. In twenty-tour hours they succeeded in turning out 1,907 American tons of rails, or 232 tons more than the previous record, held by the South Chicago rollingmill. - .

Whereas the total population of India, according to the preliminary results of the census published some! months back, was 284,614,218, further revision and examination of the returns brings out the still larger total of 288,159,692, or an average density close upon 188 persons to the square mile.