Some Records of 1900.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVI, Issue I, 5 January 1901, Page 16

Some Records of 1900.

NOTABLE THINGS DONE IN A NOTABLE TEAR. Without doubt the record records of the last year of this wonderful century can be claimed, not by human beings, but by the machines they have constructed. On June 14th last Charron, the famous French automobilist, in winning the Paris to Lyons race, covered a distance of 353 J miles in 9 liours and 9 minutes, a speed of almost 40 miles an hour. It is perhaps a question to whom the greatest credit of such a record belongs—the man who built a machine capable of such a performance, or the man who had the nerve to drive it at such a speed for such a length of time over open highroads. The other great machine-speed record which the year saw smashed is the voyage across the Atlantic. This has twice been lowered during the post year, first by the “Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse," which finished a passage at the rate of 22.89 knots an hour in August last, only to be beaten the very next day by her compatriot, the Hamburg-American “Deutschland." The latter ship arrived at Plymouth on August lltb, having covered

the distance from New York in 5 days, 11 hours, 45 mins. 'lAie speed averaged 23.324 knots an hour, and her best day's run was 552 miles. She has since succeeded in going one better even than this, having covered the journey in 5 days, 7 hours, 38 mins., her pace being 23.36 knots an hour. If the latter part of the summer was specially favourable us to wind and weather for such record-breaking performances, the earlier spring was equally unpropitious. Captain Brown, of the “Parisian,” recorded th e appearance 160 miles to the east of the Straits of Belle Isle of an iceberg bigger than Ire hail ever seen or heard of in the Western Ocean. This record berg was 75 miles long, and in places 300 to 400 feet in height. Although the year cannot claim a bigger ship than that prodigy of 1899, the yet it has seen the construction of the record pontoon. This was built on the Tyne, and is in six sections, and will be capable of bearing 12,000 tons. American shipbuilders have also launched a creation which is of her kind the largest in the world. This is the monster schooner “George W. Wells,” the first six-masted vessel ever built. She is 345 feet long over all, and 485 feet beam. Except one great iron vessel, once a steamer, she is the largest sailing vessel afloat, being able to carry 5,000 tons dead weight of cargo. Her masts, all of Oregon pine, tower 170 feet above the water, and on them can be spread 12,000 square yards of heavy canvas. Britain's biggest railway station was opened early in 1900. This is the Waverley Station of the North British Railway at Edinburgh. It covers 23 acres —that is, half an acre more than Liverpool Street. London. Waverley Station has 19 platforms, aggregating 22 miles in length, and with an area of 32.520 square yards.

Pittsburg, America, home of millionaire Carnegie's new railroad shops, has turned out an engine which quite puts in the shade anything yet built, and has, it is said, reached the limit of weight which railway lines as at present constructed will bear. With its tender, this giant locomotive weighs ISO tons; without it, 125. The tender will carry 14 tons of coal, and the boiler exceeds the capacity of any other yet constructed by 500 gallons. Long-distance athletes have been well to the fore. Holbein, the cyclist, has turned his attention to aquatics, and beaten Captain Webb’s record swim from Blackwall to Gravesend by over seven minutes. Edward Hals lias achieved another record-breaking cycling feat by* covering 100 miles a day for a year, with the exception of Sundays. The total distance ‘he covered works out at 32.479 miles. Another notable athletic record is the jump of Mr Kraenzlein. of the University if Pennsylvania, who cleared in practice 24ft 81in, beating the previous record by IJin. A Sunderland gentleman, Mr A. 11. Binns, lately achieved a performance hitherto unequalled in Swiss mountaineering. He ascended and descended the tremendous peak of the Matterhorn— from the sleeping hut to the summit and back to the Mont Rosa Hotel—in eight and a half hours. There are two curious postal records which have come to light during the last twelve months. Alexander Willis, a letter carrier of Great Shelford, be» gan delivering letters in July*, 1861, and for 38 years has never missed a single delivery. He has covered a six mile circuit daily, and has, therefore, walked in all a total distance of 84,000 miles. The other record is less to the credit of the postal service of this country. On July 2nd, 1879, a letter was posted at Newcastle-on-Tyne. On August 15th. 1900, the letter arrived at St. Martin's and was delivered to its address in Smithfield 21 years after its posting.

Prices have been remarkably high during 1900. Coal reached a record height, and sold in London for 32/ a ton. This was traced partly to the war. So too—or rather to charitable feelings engendered by the war—was the price given at the National War Bazaar for two drinks—£7o 4/. Even prices in Ladysmith during the early spring of 1900 did not match this, though some of them may stand as records. Twenty-five shillings for a threepenny packet of cigarettes, £3 for a 41b of Cavendish tobacco, and 13/ for 12 matches will be hard to beat. But the price record of the year waa

that paid by the Girdiers’ Company for the lunch they gave to the Secretary of State and the members of the Council of India last summer. The estimated value of this feast was £ 167,000,000. It would, of course, be absurd to suppose that the actual bill was even the five hundred thousandth part of this terrific total. The way the estimate is arrived at is curious. In 1734 a Mr Robert Bell, then Master of the Girdlein, ordered from the East India Company a Persian earpet. One hundred and fifty pounds was the amount to lie paid for this luxury, but in some way or other the bill was never settled, and has been accumulating at compound interest for more than a century ami a half. The present Master of the Girdlers. the Lord Mayor, discovered the debt in the 166th year of its life, and an agreement was entered into that the Girdlers should wipe it off the slate by entertaining the descendants of their original debtors to a lunch. There were 75 guests present, so each one, so to speak, consumed a meal costing over £2,000,000. In September last 21,819 individuals sat down to a banquet given, by the Paris Municipality. They were the Mayors of every town in France. Every diner had a bottle of wine. They drank between them 3000 bottles of liqueurs and smoked 22,000 eigars; 16,000 waiters were in attendance, and these received their orders from a com-mander-in-chief, who made signals by taps on a huge gong.

Many huge prices have been paid for animals, especially for horses. Edmond Blanc paid the gigantic sum of £38,350 for the Duke of Westminster’s Derby winner, Flying Fox. But all records for yearlings were broken in the early summer of 1900, when a bay filly, a daughter of Ornament and Persimmon, sold to Mr Sievier for £lO,OOO. Almost equally phenomenal is the £ 100 paid for a single Belgian hare, sent from England to California.