Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1892 — SOMEWHAT CURIOUS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SOMEWHAT CURIOUS.

Paper from rags was made in 1000 A. D., the first linen paper in 1819, and paper from straw in 1800. Chain shot were the invention oT DeWitt. the great Dutch admiral. They were first used in 1666. Flaying cards were invented for the use of the crazy King Charles VI, of France, in 1380. Weaving was practiced in China more than 1000 years before it was known elsewhere. The bagpipe, the favorite Scotch and Italian instrument, was invented by the Greeks in. 200 B. C. The great Cathedral En the City of Mexico is the largest in America, and cost to build nearly $2,009,000.

The harvester was* invented by Cyrus McCormick ini 1831, and has been improved by many subsequent inventors. The silk worm’s web* is only the 5,300 th part of an inch* in thickness, and some of the spiders spin a web so minute that it would take GO,OOO of them to lorm a rope on inch in diameter. The oldest capital in the United States is Santa Fe, which was the seat of government in New Mexico a? far back es 1640,and yet its population is only 6,185, according to Porter’s census. The United States manufactures 65,000 hats every day,, while Englandmanufactures about 40,000. The largest hat manufactory in the world is in Brussels,which* turns out 10,000 hats a day. For the first time* the Russian soldiers are to be furnished with handkerchiefs at Government expense. Banks and banking were known in Greece 385 years before Christ, in Rome 352 years 8.. G., and in Venice 1157 A. D. The Bank of England originated in 1695. The first newspaper, in the modern sense, was issued monthly at Venice in 1536; the first English newspaper was published in' 1622; the first American in 1704. Seven counties in Western Texas have refused to* issue a marriage certificate to a boy fifteen years old and a widow of forty with thirteen children- □ The British general elections are never held oa the same day, because an elector has a right to cast a ballot in every district in which he owns property. A dwarf residing at Shigaken, Osaka, is. thirty-six years old and but seventeen inches high. He is well w! nc^i^rahd“ j tsitf ! nrir*ii vritbsod by teaching penmanship. There is a surface of five thousand acres in Silesia, Prussia, which is unusually dry, but which every thirty years fills with water in some unaccountable way and becomes a lake.

WHO WAS TO BLAME?