DO YOU KNOW ?

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 2206, 1 August 1910, Page 7

DO YOU KNOW ?

WHICH IS THE WORLD'S BIGGEST KITCHEN. The Bon Marche in Paris is reputed to have the largest kitchen in the world. It provides food for the whole of the 4,000 employees of that great commercial establishment. The smallest kettle holds 75 quarts, the largest 356 quarts. There are 50 fry-ing-pans, each of which is capable of holding 300 outlets at a time, or of frying 220 pounds of potatoes. When there are omelettes for breakfast 7,800 eggs are used. The coffee machine makes 750 quarts of coffee daily. There are 60 cooks and 100 kitchen boys employed.

HOW THE ROUND ROBIN ORIGINATED.

1 The "Round Robin" originated several centuries ago in France. It was used there by officers of the army as a method of expressing their dissatisfaction with the course of the king or his ministers. By signing in a circular form the leaders of the movement could gaot be ascertained and singled '' out for punishment. The first instance on record of the use of this form of protest in our navy occurred in 1625. At the instigation of the Duke of Buckingham, an English fleet under Admiral Bennington, was despatched to Rochelle to assist in the coercion of the Protestant subjects of Louis XIII. of France. But the English tars, m common with their fellow-countrymen, looked with favour upon the resistance of their co-rcligionists to the French king, and they sighed a "round robin" ex- ' pressing their determination not to fire a shot against tbem, and without waiting for a reply they weighed anchor and brought their ships back to England. WHAT "HASHEESH" IS.

There was a terrible secret society in the East which was organised for wholesale and systematic murder. Its members called themselves "Hashbasin" —whence, by the way, came our word "assassin" —and used to get up courage of their deeds of atrocity by doses of the drug called "hasheesh." This is obtained from Indian hemp, and it is from the seed vessels that the substance is taken which yields the poison so famed in history and romance. It is a vivid green, and when taken produces the most extraordinary visions aDd hallucinations.

1 HOW TURKS RECKON TIME. A Turk holds that the day begins exactly at sunset ; at that time he sets his clock and watches at the j hour of twelve. As the sun has the same habits in presiding over Turkey that he exercises with regard to other localities, it may easily be

! seen that this system of reckoning time necessitates setting the clocks every day. It appears that a watch j which could run for weeks without | gaining or losing a minute would be of no special value to a Turk. WHAT THE "BITE OF SIN" MEANS. A curious custom has been observed in various parts of England when a death has taken place. It was called the K 'bite of sin," and when someone in a house died a piece of bread was laid on the breast of the corpse, which some passer-by was persuaded to eat for a good sum of money. In this way it was believed that the sins of the dead were transferred to the living, who in turn could cast them off together with his own by a similar ceremony when his life came to an end.