INTERESTING ITEMS.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 39, 14 May 1907, Page 5

INTERESTING ITEMS.

The first encyclopaedia was "Pliny’s Natural History,” which contains 30,00(1 facts compiled from 2,000 books by 100 authors.

Movable scenery was first used in theatres in 1508. It was invented by Baldassare Peruzzi, and displayed in Rome before Leo X.

The fingertips and the end of the tongue are the parts of the body most sensitive to pain.

In 1863, at the Oval, an eleven of j one-legged men beat a team of one-J* armed by nineteen runs.

The fruit of the "vallisneria spiralis,” a common aquarium plant, ripens under water.

The light emitted by a firefly is absolutely without heat. It is due to a form of phospheresconce.

The first ship was brought from Egypt to Greece by Danaus in 1485 P.C. The first double-decked ship was built by the Tyrians, 786 B.C.

The first woollen cloth made in England was manufactured about 1330, though it was not dyed and dressed by our countrymen until 1667.

The first record we have of coal is about three hundred years before the Christian era. Coal was used as fuel in England as early as 852.

The first toll-gate originated in 1267, the sum of one penny being exacted for every waggon that passed through a certain manor in Northumberland.

The whistle of . a locomotive can be heard 3,800 yards, the noise of a train 3,300 yards, the report 08-aj musket and the bark of a dog 1,8001 yards, the roll of a drum 1,600 yards, a dinner-bell two miles. HE* The thumb, according to professional palmists, is an unerring index of the mind. If a person is try mg to deceive you, he will invariably draw his thumb towards the palm. On the other hand, if he is telling, the truth, the thumb will be relaxoil and point away from the palm. < At the seaside or in the country,' where the air is clear, 1,500 microbes must be inhaled into the nose every hour, while in thickly populated cities the number often reach* 14,000. The organisms are caught by the me and passed to the <U-