Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1893 — MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. [ARTICLE]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

In London there are at least 60,000 homeless people. The first iron steamship was built in Great Britain in 1843. The earth receives one two-bil- ■ liotith of the heat of the sun. __ There are reported to 2,950 miles of railway in operation in Holland. Hamden, Conn., has offered a bounty of $1 for each mad dog killed. The bicycle is coming into favor with the cowboys, as a substitute for the horse. The daily consumption of needles, all over the world, is estimated to be 3,000,000. Over 1,000,000 of kangaroo skins are annually used in the United States for boot-making. In Springfield, Mo., at a meeting of the Woman s Club, one of the toasts was “The men we left .behind us.” A Sylvania (Ga.) merchant who has a lot of crinolines left over from the old days has placed them on sale in his store. : ' Some of the policemen in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, are experts with the lariat, and use it to lasso runaway horses in the park. Thomas Hornbeck, of St. Croix, Ind., has on his farm a litter of seven pigs, four of which have six legs each, and one has feet like a dog. In the hotels of Lucknow and Cawnpore, much frequented byforeign travelers, there are signs which read thus: “Please Do Not Strike the Servants.” A sleep of three months’ duration preceded the death of Louis Irig, in Whitney, Neb. He was nourished by the administration of, soft food during his long sleep. Twelve hundred beds at a penny a night each are offered to London’s homeless poor in a new Salvation Army shelter, erected on the bank of the Thames, near Blackfriars’ Bridge. Hortensius, the Roman orator,had a memory so wonderful that, on a wager, he spent a whole day at an auction, and at night repeated all the sales, the prices and the names of the buyers. Dr. J. C. Bivings, of Dalton, Ga., has a cat which in some respects resembles a kangaroo. The fore feet are much shorter than the hind ones, and it scurries over the ground just like the Australian animal,

Tramps who have once visited a certain farmhouse near Buchanan, Ga., never call there a second time. It is protected by a tame rattlesnake, whose vigilance is equal to that of the best watch-dog. The matrimonial record has been beaten by a woman in Vanlue, O. She has buried her sixth husband, and has just consoled herself by taking a seventh. A New York company refuses to insure his life. At a recent ball in Paris the sup-'' per-room, decorated with roses, leaves and vines, was a bower of beauty. The roses grew in clusters on the walls and from luxuriant vines sustained by gilt trellises, great bundles of grapes hung. The illumination in the light-house at Cape de la Heve, three miles from Havre, is equal to 23,000,000 caudles. Tt is the most powerful artificial light in the world, and in clear weather can be seen a distance of 144 miles. The Finger Prayer Book, issued by the University of Oxford, is the smallest prayer book in the world. It weighs three quarters of an ounce, and measures one inch in length by three-quarters of an inch in width. It contains t»7O pages. A bewitched apple, with a bloodred drop inside, grows on several trees in Norwich. Conn. It fs called the “Mike apple,” after a farmer named Micha, who, over two hundred years ago, was supposed to have killed a peddler and buried the body under one of his apple trees. The increase of population in the whole of Australia during 1892 is estimated by the Government Statistician at 85,000, of which only 6,700 was due to immigration. This is a smaller growth than recorded in any year since 1878. New South Wales shows the greatest increase, 31,000. The park commission of Cleveland, Ohio, has received a gift of about 300 acres of land for park purposes, extending from the Shaker Heights property to Euclid avenue. It is claimed that with this addition the East End park system of Cleveland will be one of the finest in the world. Salt spray was carried ten miles inland from Wrightsville, N. C., by the great storm the other night, giving the trees the appearance of having been out in a heavy snow storm. The oldest inhabitant doesn’t recollect such another occurrence. A convict died in the Connecticut State prison at the close of last week who had been there eight years and had never received or sent a letter. When sick unto death he was asked by the warden if he wished his f riends notified, and he replied that he had no friends to notify. He was sixty-three years cS. ago.