INTERESTING ITEMS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 18, Issue 40, 17 May 1907, Page 7

INTERESTING ITEMS.

The first encyclopaedia was "Pliny’s Natural History,” which contains 80,000 facts compiled from 2,000 bobks by 100 authors. Movable scenery was first used in theatres in 1508. It was invented by Baldassarc Peruz/i, 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 1868, at the Oval, an eleven of one-legged men beat a team of onearmed by nineteen runs. * The fruit of the "vallisneria spiralis,” a common aquarium plant, ripens under water. The light emitted by a firefly is ab« solutely without heat. It is due to a form of phosphorescence. 1 The first ship was brought from Egypt to (1 recce by Danaus in 1485 ICC. The first double-decked ship watj built by the Tyrians, 786 B.C. The first woollen cloth made in England wars manufactured about 1880, 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 I heard 8,800 yards, the noise of a train 3,800 yards, the report ofr-a musket and Ihe bark of a dog I,Boo] yards, the roll of a drum 1,600 yards, a dinner-bell two miles. The thumb, according to professional palmists, is an unerring index of the mind. If a person is trying, to deceive you, he will invariably, draw I)is thumb towards the palm. On the other hand, if he is telling, the truth, the thumb will be relaxed 1, and point away from the palm.