Miscellaneous

Lake County Press, Issue 2792, 3 July 1919, Page 7

Miscellaneous

BAITED WIRES FOR FLIES. The British Museum (National History), of South Kensington, London, recommends the use of baited wires as i a means of keeping down the house-fly. \ The baits consist of castor oil four j liquid oz., and crushed resin 9} oz.;j or linseed oil four liquid oz., and I crushed resin 7 J- oz. Heat the oil and then stir in the resin. Paint the mixture on wires about a yard in length; at one end leave a hand-hold unpainted, hook the other, and hang the wire vertically from the hooked top. When covered with flies pass the wire through a flame to clear it of the used I mixture and dead flies; heat fresh mixture and paint the wires as before. "BULLDOG BEATTY." Stories of the Victor of Jutland. (The battle-cruiser fW + ; - alive and has a very big kick in her. —Admiral Beatty.) "Early in everything." That is the motto of Admiral Beatty, the victor of Jutland. By his men he is affectionately known as "Bulldog Beatty," by reason of the tenacity with which he [ fastens on to any job he is called upon to tackle. The Germans won't forget the tenacity of his grip in a hurry. Beatty always shines with the odds against him. During the Chinese Boxer j rebellion he commanded the "Barfleur," and led a desperate attack with a | couple of hundred bluejackets against two Chinese guns which wero causing a great deal of trouble. It was a fruitless but daring effort, during which he was twice wounded. His career in the Navy has been marvellous. He was successively our ( youngest commander, the youngest captain, the youngest rear-admiral, and the youngest vice-admiral. When he was promoted to the rank of rearadmiral on January Ist, 1910, at the age of thirty-eight, ho was not only , the youngest' British rear-admiral of his time, but the youngest on record. Nelson himself was not promoted rearadmiral until he was thirty-nine. Here are the milestones in the career , of the man who dealt Admiral von ; Sclieer such a smashing blow. Born January 17th, 1871; entered the Navy i at thirteen, lieutenant at twenty : one, : wmmander at twenty-seven, captain at twenty-nine, rear-admiral at thirtyeight, and vice-admiral at forty-three. 1 Like Nelson and the admirals of old, Beatty is a deeply religious man and it was a striking message which he sent to the Society for u* Promotion of Christian Knowledge not long ago. After referring to the fact that the war has created a great religious revival in France and Russia, lie said that England "still remains to be taken out of th.3 stupor of self-satisfactioe and complacency in which her flourishing condition has steeped her, and until she can bo stirred out of this condilion, until a religious revival takes place lit home, just so long will the war continue." Admiral Beatty's great passion is for /muting. "If," says ono who know.-, Him intimately, "you saw David Beatty hunting with the Quoin or the Cottesmore, you would think ho had never seen a 'ship in his life. If you saw him on the quarter-deck, you would think ho did not know one end of a horse from the other. ~.,«., Fifteen years ago Admiral Beatty married Miss Ethel Marshall Field, (laughter of the American millionaire, j Marshal! Field, who built up a fortune i out of the greatest dry goods store I in the world. Lady Beatty is alomst as popular as

her husband, and while the Admiral lias been guarding our coasts in the North Sea Lady Bealty, closing her town and country houses, has "Worked indefatinably under the Red Cross banner.

FAR BETTER THAN COAL.

An American mining engineer has come to England with an invention for using nitrogen as an energy-producer in place of coal, at a fraction of the cost. ' He is offering it. in the first place, to the British Government. In an interview he pointed out that there arc in the atmosphere nearly four thousand billion tons of nitrogen available for use in the new power, and unlike the use of hvdro-carbon fuels, which are destroyed, his method of using nitro-powcr converts the fuel Dark into its elemental state. "It can be used." he said, "for everv purpose for which coal and crude oil arc now used, even to smelting. With the apparatus I have invented one ton of nitro-cnergy is equivalent to thirteen hundred tons of coal, and it is safer than petrol. From it electricity can be made for a fiftieth of the present cost, and five or six generating stations, witli trunk lines radiating to all-parts of the country, will turn every wheel in the kingdom, light and heat the homes, and do the cookirtjr. "A battleship could keep the seas for a year without a new supply of fuel.''

NOVEL USE FOR AN ELECTRIC IRON. ; A novel use has been found for r an electric laundry-iron. A motor-car ' owner, noticing' that the thermdmeter had suddenly dropped to several degrees of frost, realised the necessity for maintaining' the water-jacket, of the engine of his car if damage was to be obviated. On inquiring for oil to use in the heating lamp which he had employed in the previous winter for this purpose, | he found the can had not been replenished. Someone suggested the electric iron, and withoui more" ado a 61b. G. E. Co. "Magnet" was'"fetched ! from the laundry, connected with a I lamp-holder, and placed in th,e bonnet ■of the c»t. The iron was left on circuit all night, and the next morning the car was found undamaged by the intense cold, though other cars in the | neighbourhood had " been badly a'". cctcd ' - -'' "0.K." AND ITS ORICIN. In a recent number of,, the "Saturday Evening Post" (Philadelphia) a character sketch on President Wilson is contributed hv Mr. David Lawrence. It is entitled "Okeh W. W." and when one seeks to find out the origin of this somewhat enigmatical caption we are supplied with what is stated to be an explanation of the abbreviation "0.K." with which so many of us are familiar without ever having had its source divulged. "Mr. Wilson's methods," says the writer, "are novel." Secretaries and Attaches at the executive offices testify to Mr. Wilson's originality. They found him unlike his predecessors from the very day he sent back to them the first memorandum which they had submitted to him, and on which he wrote in pencil the curious phrase, "Okeh W. W." After other memoranda had been similarly marked one of the assistant secretaries asked the President whv he did not use the abbreviation "0.K." "Because' it's wrong," replied the President. There was a sudden search for dictionaries, but although some of the lexicons attributed the use of "0.K." to Andrew Jackson for "Oil Korrect," none made mention of "Okeh." "Look it up m the latest dictionary," suggested the President, and here is part of what was found:—"O.K.—A humorous or original spelling of what should be 'Okeh,' from the Choctaw language, meaning, 'lt is so; an article pronoun having a distinctive final use; all right; correct; used as an endorsement of a bill " So it has come about that "Okeh W. W." is a kind of symbol of executive power in and about the White House.

CLOTHING AN ARMY. Something very like magic is going on on every day in the world of commerce. The demand for khaki is tremendous, and in a certain factory 30,000 uniforms a day are being turned out. . , \ clever cutting-out process makes this output possible. Sixty uniforms can be cut out at one operation, and by one man. „ - ' Khaki in 20ft. lengths is laid put on long tables until there are sixty layers. A designer chalks in the various parts of the pattern, and then comes the cutter with a circular knife that is operated at lightning speed by an electric motor. The cutter sends his knife with incredible swiftness along the chalklines, and cuts through sixty layers of khaki as if they were a sheet of tissuepaper A slip would mean the ruination of sixty sections of as many garments; but the expert cutter is as sure as he is swift. The smaller and shorter lengths of cloth are cut by » saw The saw is stationary, and the operator has to pilot the cloth, turning and twisting it to make the. saw follow the chalk lines.