Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1896 — Notes of Current Events. [ARTICLE]

Notes of Current Events.

Frank Borneo, an Italian blacksmith in New York city, shot and fatally wounded his wife and then killed himself. The twenty-sixth annual convention of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union met in convention at St. i/ouis. About 1,200 delegates were present. Henry M. Whitney, the Boeton gas magnate, brother of William C. Whitney of New York, is seriously ill at his home from an attack of appendicitis. Patriotic Spaniards, living in Argentina, have given a Clyde building firm an order for a-bruiser of 4,500 tons to cost $1,000,000 and to'be delivered in eighteen months ns a gift to SpSin. A wind storm at San Louis, province of Santiago de Cuba, has demolished the barracks there, killing two guerillas outright and burying seven others under the ruins. Five perwns wore killed by electricity. The will of the late Robert Garrett, formerly president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, has been tiled for probate. The bulk of his estate, which is estimated to be worth $5,000,000, is bequeathed to bis wife. The Mussulmans have burned 200 Christian houses iu the village of Kahodlke, in the province of Selino. Christians as a reprisal are burning the Mussulman villages. Hostilities have, been resumed in various parts of Selino. Prof. C. W. Winchell, who bolds the chair of Greek in Park College. Parkville. Mo., has mysteriously disappeared. He had been spending hi* vacation in the East and the last heard frqin him was'a letter written from CineinpatT on his return trip a week ago. w Justice Oalvin E. Pratt, of the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court, died suddenly of apoplexy at Rochester, Mass., aged 08 years. In politics Jndgq Prdtt wds a Democrat. He had a distinguishes! war record and left the army with the rank of brigadier general. Freight Conductor Rouse of Newark, 0., that he caught Mrs. Kush in the act of setting his bouse on fire. In his night clothes he chased the woman, firing twife at her. thinking *he was a man. Mrs. Bush had ,poured oil on the house and ignited it white the Bush family were asleep Upstairs, Sho has been antes ted. She is probably insane over the loaa of considerable valuable real «r , U44S

The most curious experiment ever mad 6 with a piece of ordnance was at Portsmouth, England. A stage wits erected in the harbor within the' tide mark, on this an Armstrong gun of the 110-pound pattern was mounted. The gun was then loaded apd cnrefuly alined at a target—all this, of course,'dur-ing-the time of low tide. A few hours later, when the gun and the target were both covered With water to a depth of six feet, the gun was fired by means of electricity. We said “aimedat a target,” but the facts are-that there were two targets, but only was erected for this special experiment, the other being the hull of an old vessel, the Griper, which lay directly behind the target and in range of the ball. The target itself was placed only twentyfive feet from the muzzle of the gun. It was composed of oak beams and planks, and was twenty-one inched thick. In order to .make; the ,old Griper invulnerable a sheet of boiler plates three inches thick was riveted to the water-logged hull in direct range with the course ol' the ball was expected to take if not deflected by the water. On all of these-7-the oaken target, the boiler plates and the old vessel hull—the effect of the shot from the submerged gun was really startling. The woodep target was pierced through and through, the boiler iron target was broken into pieces and driven into its" “backing,” the ball passing right op through both sides of the vessel, making a huge hole, through which the water poured in torrents. Taken altogether, the experiment was an entire success, demonstrating: as it did, the feasibility of placing submerged guns in harbors in tiipe of war and doing great damage to the vessels which an enemy might dispatch to such points for the purpose of shelling cities. —lnvention. ~ -