NEW, ODD, INTERESTING

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXIX, Issue 3944, 15 July 1918, Page 4

NEW, ODD, INTERESTING

Tfia inhabitants of South America x eat serpents, lizards, and centipedes.

Murder among the ancient Persians was not punishable at the first offeuce

Nearly half the population of France is engaged in farming.

No reptiles are found in Newfoundland.

An elephant sleeps only five hours each day.

The life of the average horse in bondage is twenty-five years ; the wild horse's age is about thirty-eight years.

In 1850 only one woman worked fof wages to every ten men; now the ratio is one woman to four men,

.j . v ■ i The use oi sights on cannon for aim- ■; ing did not commend itself until the i beginning of the last century.

A solution of peroxide of hydrogen is generally used to turn hair to a golden hue

A man respires, that is. draws in breath, sixteen to twenty times v minute, or/twenty thousand times a day.

Germany's first daily newspaper waj printed three hundred and eightyeight ytars ago.

The Chinese have an academy of manners that prescribes etiquette for the whole empire.

The Bank of England suspended cash payments twice—first in 1696, and secondly in 17?i7.

, Influenza is so named because the •pidemic is supposed to have been caused by the planets.

, Whalebone is found in the moiith of the whalebone whale, where it forms tire substitute for the teeth, of which btherwise the animal is destitute.

"Paste diamonds" are artificial damonds ntade of what is known' as "French paste," a mixture of glass aa4 oxide of lead. Real diamonds avo ■very successfully imitated by the usa of this material. .. J

The second wedding or the 13-year-old daughter of IJaricharan barty—the fir^t' Hindu widow who has fiver remarried —took place*, at Chittagong, India. Her first husband died when she was six years old.

Japanese soldiers are nearly, all gymnasts, and every barrack has a gymnasium. So well trained are they that in less than half a. minute they can scale a wall 14ft. high- by simply leaping on each other's soldiers, one man sustaining two or three others.

The largest room in the world under one roof and unbroken by pillars is in St. Petersburg. It is 120 ft. long by 150 ft. in breadth. By daylight it is used for military displays, .and a battalion can completely manocirr c there.

There is nothing like a tree, to keep air pure, remarks a scientist. If a single tree of moderate size were growing where a dozen, or even as many as 20, men were sleeping, the purifying action of its leaves would keep the %ix fresh.

The ostrich is a descendant of a genus of bird which in prehistoric times attained an enormous size. In the alluvial deposits of Madagascar, evidence has recently been found to show that ostriches 14ft. .and 15ft. in height once lived on the island.

The first practical typewriting machine was constructed by Mr. A. E. Beach, an American, who patented his invention in 1847. It was a clumsy affair, however, and there was abundant room for the thousands of improvements which have since been made.

1 A house with sound-proof rooms, 3esigned for the .sole use of music students and teachers, is to be built In Berlin. The house will contain 50 rooms, in any one of which lessons may be given and practise may be done without the possibility •of disturbing- others, or of being dis* turbed. '

Prof. Malladra, of tK© Vesuvius Observatory, and two companions recently performed the feat of descending into the crater of Vesuvius to a depth' of about 1200 feet. This is a new record in the exploration of active volcanoes. These experts who make a business of studying Vestifian conditions

lire of the opinion that the mountain *^«ill before long enter upon another ling period of violent eruption. It has b«|^Qtin^th,Qrfe -foy observing certain . signs it T^possible to predicterji^fcions pr«tty closely. *^

The moving-picture machine is beginning to play an important port in increasing the efficiency of workmen in factories. In one case a workman required S7 minutes to assemble a certain machine. Experts watching him oould detect no part of the work that was wasting time because of useless effort. A moving-picture machine was used, and the expert, by studying the film, was then able to suggest changes by which the same workman learned how to do the same work in nina minutes, and do it easier and at higher pay than he did before