A Lancashire Samson.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19014, 8 March 1930, Page 28 (Supplement)

A Lancashire Samson.

a JLttuicasiure o-aiiL— Cyril Walker, aged 17, employed as an enameller in Bolton, Lancashire, can, amongst other things, lift a four hun-dred-weight girder with a finger-tip grip; hold six men on his chest; pull a motor ambulance with his teeth; resist six men with the grip of one hand; tear a new pack of cards in a few seconds; pulp an apple with a single-handed grip; bend steel bars with the naked hands; and hammer steel nails through two-inch boards with the palm of his hand. Once he amazed the driver of a ton fruit lorry which had broken down by lifting the lorry while supports were obtained. Why Sixty Minutes? The splitting up of the hour and the minute each into what is seemingly a curious division, sixty parts, is a link with one of the most ancient of peoples, the Chaldeans, or early Babylonians. The Chaldeans reduced their study of the heavens to a mathematical problem. They realised that the sun made a complete circle of the heavens in the course of the year and so arrived at the degree—approximately the distance each day travelled by the sun. It was their custom to reckon in terms of sixties and multiples of sixty, and later astrologers followed their example and split up the hour into sixty small or minute parts and called them minutes. The minute, in turn, was divided into sixty parts and so we get the seconds—the second subdivision of the hour. A series of international contests between German, Italian and American amateurs was scheduled for decision in New York and Boston last month. The classes were light, welter, middle and light-heavy. Two motorists, having had a breakdown, were forced to spend the night at a country pub where guests were not as a rule accommodated. They were shown to lumpy and uncomfortable beds in the one guest room. At dead of night one awoke sniffing hard, and in a whisper said to his friend: “ Bill, Bill, the gas is escaping.” “ Lucky gas,” groaned Bill.