Wet and Dry Moons

1910

There is an old superstition, which dies hard, that the position of the horns of the new moon tells what the weather will be; if the horns of the crescent are on the same level, it will hold water, and hence it is a dry moon; but if it is tipped up, then the water will run out, and it is a wet moon.

One thing has helped keep this belief alive; the moon is "dry" in the part of the spring that is usually fair, while it is "wet" during the season of autumn rains.

If this were a sure sign of the weather we could have our predictions years in advance, for an astronomer can predict the exact position of the moon at any time in the future.

The cause for the different positions of the crescent is simple: The moon is south of the sun in the autumn and north of it in spring. The crescent is found by the light of the sun falling on the moon, and the horns are naturally in a line perpendicular to the direction of the sun from the moon.

That is all there is to it.

Professor Explains New Theory About the Moon's Origin

Nebraska, 1910

Prof. Swezey Gives Explanation of Idea Advanced by Scientists on Moon

Professor G. D. Swezey at convocation at the university summer school this morning delivered an illustrated lecture on the moon. He took up the theory recently advanced by some scientists that the substance of the moon was broken loose from the earth in the region of what is now the Pacific ocean and that the departure from there of this amount of matter is what has left the Pacific basin. He told the students that he would give the theory for what it was worth as he was not ready to take up the theory nor to flatly reject it.

By means of his stereopticon views he pointed out the facts that help to make the theory plausible. He mentioned the fact that the moon has a mass about one-eightieth of the earth. To obtain this amount of material would require the skimming off the crust of the earth to a depth of some thirty-five miles. It is of course known that the Pacific is not that deep, but if the earth were in a semi-plastic condition at the time the material was taken from the crust it would readily run back partially at least into the spherical shape.

The professor had a diagram showing the possibility that the continents of the western hemisphere may have torn asunder from those of the eastern hemisphere as the land moved toward the great gap left in the Pacific basin by the departure of the moon. It is found that in bringing the two hemispheres together the outline of the coast lines of South America and Africa fit each other as though they had been torn apart with a few allowances for possible readjustment and rearrangement of the continental fragments. The same is true in a less marked degree in North America and Europe.

—Lincoln Evening News, Lincoln, Nebraska, Aug. 10, 1910, p. 7.

Eli Clouse Revives Annual Hunting Story

1909

It is reported in the city papers that Eli Clouse of Friend's Cove, 30 miles northeast from Cumberland, in Bedford County, has again killed a big deer that had been roaming over the Martin Mountain for many years. The deer was called "Old Elick." It is peculiar that the same old Eli Clouse kills the same old deer every year but he does. Next year "Old Elick" will be roaming again and old Clouse will kill him and tell the old story again to the old hunters who come to hunt on the State reservation and the story will get in the city papers as is its custom. Another peculiar feature of this story is that Martin Hill, where Clouse kills his old deer, is only a few miles from each reporter's headquarters. Surely the mountain do move as often as the deer has lives. It is the reporter's faith that moves the mountain every time. — Cumberland Alleganian.


The Man in the Moon

Russian folklore tells that the man in the moon was one who was seeking the isle in which there is no death. At last, after traveling far, he found the longed-for heaven and look up his above in the moon. After a hundred years had passed, death called for him one Christmas eve and a fierce struggle ensued with the moon, who was victorious; and so the man stayed where he was.


Daily Thought

Whoever you are, be noble; Whatever you do, do well; Whenever you speak, speak kindly — Give joy wherever you dwell.

Moonshine and Murder

1914

A dispatch recently appeared regarding a maniac now pursuing his murderous career throughout various of the Western States, armed with an ax, which, according to the view of the benighted, he is moved to wield only in the dark of the moon. Why in the dark and not in the light, they do not explain; anyhow, most of his deeds have been accomplished in the absence of the lunar glow, and hence is argued a mysterious connection between that fact and his recurring fits of homicidal insanity.

Every scientist in the land will scout this theory at once, just as they have the theory that the things that grow down should be planted in the dark of the moon, and the crops that grow upward in its light. Some of 'em will admit that crabs fatten under moonlight, but this, they claim, is because they can see better to hustle around for their meals under such conditions. They will further point out, no doubt, that most murderous deeds, and especially those that have been deliberately planned, will be perpetrated when darkness lends a measure of protection to the murderer and removes the same from his victim.

Be that as it may, we still have the poets to fall back on. Didn't Byron say "The devil's in the moon for mischief?" And Othello, who had his own reasons for knowing, could cry:

It is the very error of the moon;
She comes more nearer earth than she was wont.
And makes men mad.

Which may not have been altogether grammatical, but it is far more convincing than anything the scientists have had to offer up to the hour of going to press.

The Siderostat — A Wonderful Instrument to Magnify, View the Moon

1895

Moon at Close Range

A Wonderful Instrument Will Limn Her Figure

Magnified for Us — And at Last We Shall See If She Has Any Queer People on Her — A Frenchman's Hope May Be Realized

Not only to-day but in all ages men have been anxiously endeavoring to solve the mystery of the moon. The ancients made her their goddess, and entered upon no new undertakings without first asking her advice and consulting the probabilities of the influence with which even to-day many superstitious persons endow her.

The lens has long been regarded as the means by which we will be enabled, if at all, to study the moon's mysteries. The only question has been how to make a lens large enough. It seems to have been recognized that there is a limit to what may be called the carrying power of a lens. Alvin Olark, of Cambridge, is the man who makes big lenses, and he has about reached his limit.

Two of these record-breaking lenses are in the great Chicago telescope, and two more are about to be set in the recently mounted telescope in the Paris Observatory. A French scientist, M. Deloncle, proposes to use these lenses for a novel purpose. The plan is said to be more than three-fourths realized. It will require glasses of over forty-nine inches in diameter. A famous French lens-maker is at work on these glasses for an instrument which M. Deloncle calls the siderostat.

With this M. Deloncle hopes to interview the moon and to establish once for all whether that interesting and much-discussed planet is inhabited. It will tell us whether the moon has cities, monuments and larger buildings and also explain its signals to us, if it has any.

Says a French writer of it: "The invention is an ingenious one and demands for its perfection a man, convinced he is right, having, so to speak, plenty of 'pluck.' It is the natural outcome of all that has gone before, from Metius to Mantois; but it belongs especially to the particular genius of its author, because no one before him, not even the most learned astronomers, had dared to imagine so strange and yet so useful an instrument for stellar observation. It is the cannon of 103 tons, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Eastern of optics. The Siderostat surpasses anything of its kind. It does not even bear any resemblance to existing telescopes.

"The spectators will stand and it will lie, pointing its long horizontal tunnel at a mirror fourteen inches in thickness and weighing 13,000 pounds. The image of the satellite will be reflected, and coming out of the ocular will be projected on a screen upon which two, three, five hundred spectators may see the moon. A magnifying glass will enlarge the image to enormous proportions and a very delicate mechanical contrivance will set the mirror in motion, so that it will follow the apparent movements of the planet. The scheme will be gigantic; it will truly be 'Twentieth Century!' The question arises among the doubtful: Will it be practical? After all, negat alter!

"Unfortunately Mme. Moon, the indispensable prima donna of this lunar theater, often disappoints us. In the first place, there will be many evenings when, following in the footsteps of her capricious human sisters, she will decline to come forth from the shadows of her cloudy boudoir. Photography may be brought into requisition, and, like the understudies on the real stage, take the role of the sulking prima donna. In which case the siderostat will be vulgarized to the mean part of a huge magic lantern, which misfortune, for the sake of science, it is to be hoped will never transpire."

—The Perry Bulletin, Perry, IA, Oct. 16, 1895, p. 2.