SUN-STROKES!

Thames Star, Volume LIX, Issue 16787, 14 May 1926, Page 6

SUN-STROKES!

The summer sun is distant 1 95,000,000 miles from you as you lie on the beach and bask, or gasp, in its rays, but the sun you see is only a part of the real sun. Do you know that the sun is composed of sodium, iron magnesium, cobalt, hydrogen, nickel, titanium, chronium and a few other things? There are movements in the sun, but no signs of it being burnt out or exhausted. It is not the heat that gives you sunstroke, but the invisible violet rays of the sun, and the base of your skull is the vulnerable spot. Sunburn is really the rupture and inflammation of the tiny veins of the skin. And you wear white in the sun time not because it looks cool, but because that colour resists the heat of the sun better than colours. The violet tinge over everything after you have looked at the sun is there because violet is the accidental colour ;qf yellow—the sun’s colour. You cannot really look at the sun, but birds can, because they have an extra eyelid which can be drawn down to act as a screen or shield. The sun is hottest between three and four, summer time. And the sun seems much larger at sunrise and sunset —although it never sets or rests—because it is then nearer the terrestial objects, and so gains by comparison. A red sunset portends fine weather, a red sunrise indicates wet —the vapour in the air already condensed to clouds. Finally, the hottest summer sun will never, by itself, ignite natural substances, and. for all the germs it kills with its light it brings as many more into existence with its warmth.