The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing Part 6

Dip your razor in hot water before stropping and shaving. This dissolves the acc.u.mulation in the invisible teeth.

Press as hard as you like on the back of the blade, but very lightly on the edge.

As you reach the end of the strop, turn the razor on the back of the blade to strop the other side, pulling toward you.

Keep rust away from your strop, and remember that a cut in the strop will ruin your razor. Don't use a strop that is cut.

FACTS TO SETTLE ARGUMENTS

Telephone invented. 1861.

There are 2,750 languages.

Sound moves 743 miles per hour.

Hawks can fly 150 miles an hour.

Chinese invented paper, 170 B. C.

A hand, horse measure, is 4 inches.

German Empire re-established, 1871.

Storm clouds move 36 miles an hour.

The first steel pen was made in 1830.

Phonographs invented by Edison, 1877.

Light moves 187,000 miles per second.

Watches were first constructed in 1476.

First steamer crossed the Atlantic, 1819.

Rome was founded by Romulus, 752 B. C.

First musical notes used, 1338; printed, 1502.

The first Atlantic cable was operated in 1858.

The first balloon ascended from Lyons, France, 1783.

Slow rivers flow at the rate of seven-tenths of a mile per hour.

Napoleon I. crowned Emperor, 1804; died at St. Helena, 1820.

Harvard, the oldest college in the United States, was founded, 1638.

The first steam engine on this continent was brought from England, 1753.

The most extensive park is Deer Park in Denmark. It contains 4,200 acres.

Measure 209 ft. on each side and you will have a square acre, to an inch.

Albert Durer gave the world a prophecy of future wood engraving in 1527.

The first iron ore discovered in this country was found in Virginia in 1715.

"Bravest of the Brave" was the t.i.tle given to Marshal Ney at Friedland, 1807.

The highest bridge in the world, 360 ft. from the surface of the water, is over a gorge at Constantine in Algiers.

The first volunteer fire company in the United States was at Philadelphia, 1736.

St. Augustine, oldest city in the United States, founded by the Spaniards, 1565.

Jamestown, Va., founded, 1607; first permanent English settlement in America.

Books in their present form were invented by Attalus, kind of Pergamos, 198 B. C.

Robert Raikes established the first Sunday-school, at Gloucester, England, 1781.

Oberlin College, Ohio, was the first in the United States that admitted female students.

The first knives were used in England, and the first wheeled carriages in France, in 1559.

The largest park in the United States is Fairmont, at Philadelphia, and contains 2.740 acres.

The highest natural bridge in the world is at Rockbridge, Virginia, being 200 feet high to the bottom of the arch.

The largest empire in the world is that of Great Britain, being 8,557,658 square miles, and more than a sixth part of the globe.

The first electrical signal ever transmitted between Europe and America pa.s.sed over the Field submarine cable on Aug. 5, 1858.

Paris was known as Lutetia until 1184, when the name of the great French capital was changed to that which it has borne ever since.

The longest tunnel in the world is St. Gothard, on the line of the railroad between Lucerne and Milan, being 9-1/2 miles in length.

Burnt brick were known to have been used in building the Tower of Babel.

They were introduced into England by the Romans.

The loftiest active volcano is Popocatapetl. It is 17,784 feet high, and has a crater three miles in circ.u.mference and 1,000 feet deep.

The largest insurance company in the world is the Mutual Life of New York City, having cash and real estate a.s.sets of over $350,000,000.