Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1893 — OUT OF THE ORDINARY. [ARTICLE]

OUT OF THE ORDINARY.

JudaS sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver; that is thirty Roman pennies, about 14.12}. ' One Roman penny was a good day’s wages for an agricultural laborer. A number of Australian lady bugs were recently shipped to California on ice. They were kept in cold storage on shipboard for thirty days, and arrived well and kicking. They are to be used for destroying insects that prey upon orange trees. The small incandescent lamp now ased bjr physicians to aid iu the diagnosis of diseases enables the trained eye t<s lit&ral’y “flee through" i person. By inserting the little iDitrument, which is no larger than a pea, in the stomach, the “true inwardness” is revealed.

On the summit of Ben Lomond may be seen the smallest tree that grows in Great Britain. It is known as the dwarf willow, and is, when mature, only about two inches in height. It is estimated that of the five million inhabitants,in London over one million are poor—living on less than £1 a week for each family—while Over 300,000 are in chronic poverty. The first Sabbath school was instituted in 1787. There are now in the United States 108,939 Sabbath schools, with 8,049,000 scholars. The world has 20,078,595 Sabbath school scholars.

A mining company at Ishpeming, Mich., has undertaken to empty Lake Angeline, covering 160 acres and seventy feet deep in the middle. ' Very valuable deposits of iron ore lie at the bottom of the lake. =—- The Hebrews had no coins of their own until the days of the Maccabees, who issued shekels and half shekels, with the inscriptions “Jerusalem, the Holy,” “Simon r Prince of Israel.” These bear ho images. Impaling was used as a punishment in Turkey up to 1855. The last men impaled were four Arab Shieks, who had rebelled. They were impaled at the four corners of the Bagdad bridge. One of them lived nine days. The charter of the United States Bank was limited to twenty years; a new bank was chartered in 1816 with a capital of 135.000,000; it was this bank from which Jackson removed the Government deposits in 1833. The custom of Chinese wearing pigtails is not very ancient. It dates from 1627, when the Manchus, who then commenced their conquest of the Celestial Empire, enforced this fashion of doing the hair as a sign of degredation. The average queue is four feet long.