Entries from June 2004 ↓

The English public appears at this moment to be under the spell of a bacillic spectre which disturbs severely the piece of mind of the well-to-do. With the advent of the epidemic of grip¹ the doctors relied upon oysters and champagne as a mitigating remedy. Just at that time it was reported that typhoid fever was a possible sequence to indulgence in the first.² In consequence the bivalve was avoided, with a corresponding increase in the dose of champagne. Following close on the heels of this theory came the discovery that death lurked in watercress. Dr. Verdon, the medical officer of the health board of Lambeth, stated officially, after an inspection of the various watercress farms about London, that the plant was contaminated with sewage water and consequently dangerous to the health of the people of London, who consumed all the Lambeth crop. On top of this it was announced that bread was positively dangerous unless baked at a temperature of 100 deg. centigrade. As no one could be positive that this particular degree of heat was employed in the brand which he consumed, all bread was looked upon with suspicion. To add to this burden of uncertainty, bacteriologists uttered a note of warning against the contaminating possibilities of the common house fly. It was clearly demonstrated by these investigators, that, in default of any other explanation, the fly must be held responsible for the spread of disease. There is at least one advantage in the acute interest of people in the bacillic theory, and that is the closer attention which is now given to care in the preparation of food. This is very much in evidence in the kitchens of hotels. There are many of these in New York, where every person who has anything to do with the cooking, preparing, or serving of aliments is required before he enters the kitchen to wash his hands thoroughly with antiseptic soap and to dry them on a separate towel. Care is taken that this process shall be repeated at intervals during the day, clean towels being provided for each ablution.

Dr. Schliemann has just deposited in the British Museum a dagger believed to be made of meteoric steel and exhumed by him in the royal palace of Troy. This is the first iron discovered by him in his excavations, either in the Troad or the Peloponesus, and is of the very greatest archaeological interest.

The [Rutland (Vt.) Herald][] relates a remarkable instance of telegraphing under difficulties, that occurred on Monday last. A train on the Bennington and Rutland Railroad had got stuck fast in a snow bank three-quarters of a mile from Shaftsbury, and could neither proceed nor back out. There was no means of telegraphing for assistance, and but for the opportune presence of Mr. John M. Hills, a telegraph operator who was on board, the dilemma would have been an unpleasant one. At his suggestion a messenger was despatched to Shaftsbury for a piece of wire. This obtained, a telegraph pole was climbed and the conducting wire cut. Then Mr. Hills affixed the piece of wire to one of the ends of the telegraph wire, and by striking the end of this against the other end of the telegraph wire formed a circle and communicated to the officers of the road at Rutland their condition, asking that an engine be sent to their assistance, which was at once despatched, and succeeded in getting the blockaded train out of its difficulty. Mr. Hills received the answer to his despatch from the Rutland office by placing the end of the wire on either side of his tongue, and receiving the shocks in his system.

After some trouble the police have succeeded in arresting about a dozen publishers’ clerks and others who had formed themselves into an organized association for the sale of stolen books. Upward of 10,000 volumes of science, fiction and history had been purloined from publishers’ or booksellers’ establishments. Six thousand of the volumes were found in the possession of a man who had three shops, in addition to a bookstall on one of the quays, where he only transacted business as a blind; his real work being the dispatch of the stolen property to the provinces.

There recently died in the Missouri penitentiary a man who was totally blind, yet a thief of considerable expertness.

The Indians will very soon be, on the average, the richest people in the country. Some tribes of them are now worth several thousands per head.

A man in Auburn, Me., just had to sneeze the other day when his mouth was full of carpet tacks. One went down his throat, but the doctor got it out.

There’s a good story afloat of a man who has a £5,000 Bank of England note and makes a good income renting it out for weddings, where it appears as the bride’s father’s gift.

Customs officers near Belgrade recently seized a lot of human bones consigned to a Vienna bone-boiling house. They had once belonged to Russian and Turkish soldiers who fell in the war of 1878.

Lewis Pierce of Batavia was wounded twice in the last war, and has been struck by lightning once, twice shipwrecked at sea, and smashed and crushed in several runaways. The other day a finger was crushed.

The public has had its sense of the wondrous very much blunted during the past year or two by the rapid introduction of telephones and agraphones¹, microphones, [phonographs][] and the like, so that if the announcement were to be made that Professor Somebody had devised a plan by which a person could make a trip between Philadelphia and Liverpool² in twenty-four hours the public would only be surprised, not astonished. It certainly seems marvelous enough to say that there has been discovered a way in which persons may sit in their own homes and listen to sermons, converts or lectures going on in churches or halls miles distant, and but a brief time ago such a statement would have been regarded with incredulity; to-day it simply evokes the remark, “I thought they’d get up something like that.”

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A trio of alleged mediums stopped at Byron and engaged the opera house. On information which they claimed came from spirits, they made statements concerning certain citizens which may make business for the divorce mill. Almost immediately afterward the air was filled with flying eggs, stones and clubs. The opera house was badly disfigured and its manager, Martin D. Comstock, procured a warrant for the arrest of Dr. F.S. Ruggles, president of the village, and six others, charging them with malicious destruction of property. They all pleaded not guilty and gave bail.

Although still so young a man, Nikola Tesla is beginning to find the honors shower thickly upon him. He has already been made, within the last year, a doctor by Columbia College, and an M.A. by Yale, while one of the leading universities of the far west has recently invited him to accept one of its diplomas. A couple of years ago he received the rare order of St. Sava from the King of Servia, and last week news reached him officially that the Order of the Eagle had been conferred upon him by the Prince of Montenegro, who may be said to represent the race from which Tesla springs. His own people are very proud of this young genius, even though he has become an American citizen, and not long ago the unique honor was bestowed upon him by the Servian government depart of posts and telegraphs, of printing a special Tesla postage stamp. When Mr. Tesla went home to his native land four or five years ago, each of the six morning newspapers in Belgrade saluted his arrival the same day with an original poem. The modest inventor appreciates these manifestations deeply, but he says laughingly to his friends that he “would go home oftener if there was less of it.”