Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 February 1875 — FACTS AND FIGURES. [ARTICLE]

FACTS AND FIGURES.

j—No library in the United States contain# over 300,000 volumes. • —Our naval expenses amount to $3,500 for each enlisted man per annum. —The vital statistics of Hartford, Conn., for the year 1874 were: Births 935, deaths 588. —Forty-eight vessels were driven ashore and wrecked on the Atlantic coast last year and the losses were about 13,000,000. —A Boston tea company offers $.500 in gold for the nearest guess at the gross weight of an eight-horae team which draws one of its wagons. —During January 8,890 gallons of free soup were’ furnished at Boston to 10,739 families, comprising 50,365 persons, at an expense to the city of $1,823. —ln a few years two rats become 646,808, and yet the druggists look with suspicion on a man who asks for a dime’s worth of strychnine. —Danbury Neu>». Subscriptions to the loan asked for by the city of Paris amounted to 10,500,000,000 francs, or, in our money, $2,100,000,000. Only 250,000,000 francs was asked for. —This year diligent effort has been made in Kentucky to report every child entitled to the benefits of the school fund, aud the result shows an increase in the school census of over 9,500 pupil children. —Statistics show that if a person should travel on Massachusetts railways 700 miles a day he would, by the doctrine of chance, be seventy years of age before he received any injury by a railway accident. —The divorce business seems to be pretty good in Maine, and is constantly increasing; indeed, some will have it that a divorce can be got in Maine easier than in any other State. Last year 487 bills were granted, of which 238 were for desertion. —lt will take seven tons of locks and keys to supply the 4,000 doors of the Palace Hotel at San Francisco. Each lock is to have a dozen keys, and the contract to supply them has been awarded to a San Francisco mechanic, who is to furnish 3,000 locks aud 48,000 keys for $20,000. —The California wool product for 1874 was little short of 40,000,000 pounds, against 31,000,000 in 1873 and 23,000,000 in 1882. Of this total 36,000,000 was sent out of the State, 32,000,000 by rail, an item of no small magnitude and profit in the traffic of the Pacific Railroad. The exported crop returned $8,120,000, which is less per pound than in the previous year, but still a good price. , —lt has been estimated by some statistical genius that the great American nation smokes 5,168,000 cigars a day. This, at five cents a cigar, (and what sort of a cigar can you expect for five cents?) would amount to over $250,000 a day; so that, if the above was not a mere figure of speech, our nation expends an enormous amount in smoke, and no wonder she requires so much capital to-back her. —Boston Commercial Bulletin . r —Somebody has been at the trouble of calculating the average number of hairs which grow on an average person’s head. It is found that the number varies according to the color of the hair. Light or blonde hair is the most luxuriant, the average of this color being 140,000. When the hair is brown the number is much less, being only 110,000, while black hairs reach only the average amount of 103,000. It might naturally be supposed that a light-haired person, having the most hair, would have the greatest weight to carry, but it is not so. That which is lightest in color is also lightest in weight; and a lady with abundant flaxen locks is as light-headed as one whose tresses are of a raven hue. Hence it follows that the former is of a finer texture.