Current Events and Curiosities
By Editor
As an experiment, one thousand Maxim silencers are being fitted to rifles for the use of the United States army. The rifles will then be smokeless, noiseless, and have a range of five miles. The Anti-Saloon League of Maryland offers $1,000 in prizes for the best essays on the subject, "What it costs the people of Baltimore, morally, physically, mentally, financially, and industrially to secure the million dollars a year which the city now receives from the liquor traffic under the high license law." The first prize will be $500, and the next three best of $250, $150, and $100 respectively. The contest is open to any person anywhere except the salaried employees of the League. Essays must not exceed 5,000 words, must be typewritten, double spaced, ample margin, on one side of white paper, and the name and address of the writer given. Essays must be sent to Rev. J. F. Heisse, D.D., 801 American Building, Baltimore, Maryland. One of the latest marvels of surgery is the successful transference of part of an eye from one living person to another. In New York recently the cornea of a woman's eye which she was forced to lose by an accident, was grafted onto the eyeball of a Chinaman. Later it was found necessary to reshape the pupil. In a Philadelphia hospital, the cornea of a young man's eye who was made blind by a flying piece of steel, was transferred to the eye of a woman who had been blind from infancy. After twenty days it was found that the woman could see for the first time in her life. A baby weighing exactly thirty ounces was born to Mr. and Mrs. C. F. Seiler, St. Louis, Missouri. His head was the size of a silver dollar. The account says: "The high cost of living was of no importance to him, for he took his meals through a medicine dropper, and used a foot of cotton batting for a dressing-gown, while a hot-water bottle sufficed for a bed. The attending physician says the youngster will develop into a normal being." The Marconi wireless station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, is now open for communication with Clifden, Ireland. The opening of the high-power station has brought an increase in the commercial business handled in this country, Canada, and Great Britain. The Glace Bay station covers 150 acres, and the fan-shaped aerial wires are 6,000 feet long and about 1,000 feet wide. These wires are supported by thirty masts, each 250 feet high. The instruments are of the most powerful make, having a communicating radius of 3,000 miles. At the Belmont Park International Aviation Meet in New York several demonstrations were made of high altitude flying. J. Armstrong Drexel ascended 7,205 feet. Later his record was broken by Ralph Johnson, who ascended 7,303 feet. Walter Brookins in his baby Wright biplane rose to a height of 4,882 feet, when his motor abruptly stopped and he coasted back the entire distance to earth. Five hundred delegates, coming from forty nations, assembled at the Sixth International Congress of Esperanto recently in Washington. Esperanto is said to be making considerable progress as a world language. At its last session the Maryland legislature passed a law permitting the study of the language in her public schools. An experiment in an open-air public school for tuberculosis children is in operation at Mont Clair, New Jersey. During the winter the children will study under a large tent, and blocks of heated soapstone will be provided on extremely cold days. Hot milk and crackers will be served in the morning. A startling statement by the health officer at Atlanta, Georgia, after investigating the result of one year's milk supply, is that eighty-two children have died from poisoned milk caused by unsanitary conditions. The British Blue Book shows that when 1,700 saloons were closed in England there were 18,285 fewer cases of crime than the previous year with the saloons. Three persons died in Orange, New Jersey, as the result of eating poisonous toadstools which they thought were mushrooms.