The Travels of an Eyelid

1901

The many thousands of miles which a man unconsciously travels in his lifetime, taking into consideration the paces his footsteps measure as he walks about each day, are enough to make him sit down to rest for the remainder of his life.

But now a German scientist has come forward with some still more startling facts concerning the journeys which our eyelid undertakes every time it winks, and it is not possible for us to see, he says, unless we wink. Unconsciously we wink once a second, so that for the time we are awake during the day we voluntarily wink from 48,000 to 50,000 times and in a year have moved our eyelids down and up again no less than 18,250,000 times. The distance that the eyelid travels in its great speed is measured from a single involuntary wink.

This, the scientist says, is a quarter of an inch both ways, the eyelid moving equally up and down, so that, taking the movement of both eyelids into consideration, they cover some 50,000 inches in a day. The eyelids of a man who has lived for 50 years will have unconsciously traveled a third of the way around the earth, or about 7,200 miles, a calculation sufficient in itself to cause the victim of insomnia to fall into a dreamless sleep as he reads it. — London Mail.

Green Not Restful to the Eyes

1901

It seems as though cherished notions were no sooner on an apparently firm foundation than some inconsiderate iconoclast comes along and throws them down. People have for many years supposed that the color green was restful to human eyes and have been referred to the green grass and green foliage that nature has been so prodigal with for the benefit of weaned vision.

Now, according to a German professor of Berlin, nature wasn't thinking of human eyes when she made her profuse verdant display and that her color scheme was carried out absolutely regardless of the visual needs of humanity. He says that green does not protect the eye, and he denies that it has any beneficial effects whatever.

He declares that green paper, green shades, green glasses, green decorations and green umbrellas are all a mistake and that by increasing the green light we are simply provoking a nervous disturbance.

He says that each of the colors tires a different set of nerves of vision, and therefore looking at one particular color saves one set of nerves at the expense of another. The best method he says, is to dim all of the rays of light by smoked or gray glasses, which rest all of the optic nerves. — New York Herald.

Pilloried and Flogged, Some of the Gruesome Details

1878

Pilloried and Flogged

A recent dispatch from Wilmington, Delaware, says: This morning, at a few minutes past ten o'clock, in a cold, drizzling easterly rain storm, the first of the culprits to be flogged as a punishment for felony in this county at Newcastle was marched into the jail yard, attended by the warden and sheriff.

Mounting a rickety old ladder, two prisoners were promptly pilloried. For an hour they stood there in the face of the few spectators who ensconced themselves in corners of the jail yard to be sheltered from the rain which pelted pitilessly upon the victims of the pillory. At the expiration of an hour they were released. One retired.

The other, William Barry, a hardened criminal, by the way, who boasted that he had been in thirty-six different jails in the country, was strapped to the whipping post, stripped bare to the waist, and received quite a severe flogging. He felt the punishment severely, and looked imploringly at the sheriff as the lash descended twenty times on his bare back.

A lad named McGuire, evidently of delicate organization, was next stripped and tied to the post. He was very anxious and frightened. The sheriff dealt mercifully with him, and the twenty lashes did not much more than well redden his back.

The next was Monk Austin, who was convicted of a petty larceny, and although he shivered and was much affected by the cold rain on his naked skin, he bore his punishment with nonchalance.

A young fellow named Kiefly, the companion of Austin, stepped up to the post, threw his coat off jauntily and received his twenty lashes with indifference.

The next three were colored men; one convicted for larceny, the other two for felonious assault. They each received the usual twenty lashes and wriggled and roared under the infliction.

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The name of the potato bug, in Germany, is Pffischtendiriwechtenlawbedenachtoschooptenschafflichtheit. This is what makes it so hard to kill them.