Part 72

There are said to be more than two million little openings in the skins of our bodies to serve as outlets for an equal number of sweat glands. The body contains more than two hundred bones. It is said that as much blood as is in the entire body passes through the heart every minute, i.e., all the blood in the body goes in and out of the heart once every minute. The lung capacity of the average person is about 325 cubic inches.

With every breath you inhale about two-thirds of a pint of fresh air and exhale an equal amount if you breathe normally.

The stomach of the average adult person has a capacity of about five pints and manufactures about nine pounds of gastric juice daily.

There are over five hundred muscles in the body all of which should be exercised daily to keep you in the best condition. The average adult human heart weighs from eight to twelve ounces and it beats about 100,000 times every twenty-four hours. The perspiration system in the body has only very small ducts or pipes, but there are about nine miles of them. The average person takes about one ton of food and drink each year. We breathe about eighteen times a minute, which amounts to about 3,000 cubic feet an hour.

Where Did the Expression “Kick the Bucket” Originate?

The expression originally came from the method used in stringing a hog after killing it. The pig after being slaughtered was hung by the hind legs. A piece of bent wood was passed in behind the tendons of each of the hind legs and the pig hung up by this stick of wood much like we hang up clothes with a clothes hanger today. The piece of wood was called a bucket. The “bucket” part of the expression does not, therefore, refer to a bucket at all but to this bent piece of wood. All are not agreed on this explanation, however, as it does not explain where the “kick” comes in. Many investigators hold to the belief that a man named Bolsover was the first to “kick the bucket” literally and that the expression came from the manner of his death. He stood on a pail or bucket while arranging to hang himself by tying a rope around his neck and to a beam which he could not reach without standing on the bucket. When ready he kicked the bucket out from under his feet and so succeeded in carrying out his own wishes and in so doing coined a famous expression which still means “to die.”

How Did the Word “News” Originate?

The word “News” which was created to describe what newspapers are supposed to print, came from the four letters which have for ages been used as abbreviations of the directions of the compass. In this N stands for North, E for East, S for South and W for West, and in illustrating the points of the compass the following diagram has long been used:

N | W--+--E | S

The earliest newspapers always printed this sign on the front pages of their papers in every issue. This was done to indicate that the paper printed all the happenings from four quarters of the globe.

Later on some enterprising newspaper man who may have forgotten the original significance of the letter in the diagram, arranged the letters N. E. W. S. in a straight line at the head of the paper and that is how what we read in the papers came to be known as news.

Almost one-half the whole number of newspapers published in the world are published in the United States and Canada.

Who Made the First Umbrella?

No one knows who made the first umbrella but we know that Jonas Hanway of London was the first man to carry one over his head to keep off the rain.

Umbrellas seem to have been known as far back as the days of Ninevah and Persepolis, for representations of them appear frequently in the sculptures of those early days. The women of ancient Rome and Greece carried them but the men never did.

Mr. Hanway is said to be the first man who walked in the streets of London with an open umbrella over his head to keep off the rain. He is said to have used it for thirty years before they came into general use for this purpose.

The first picture shows what was probably man’s first method of telling time. The principle was the same as that of the sun-dial. It provides to-day an accurate method of telling time.

Of course, man in the early days needed to find some other means of noting the passing of time at night, for then the sun cast no shadow for him. His ingenuity taught him to make a candle which was light and dark in alternate rings, and as each section burned he made a mark to record the passing of a certain length of time. Before candles were invented he used a rope in which he tied knots at equal spaces apart and which he burned as shown in the third picture.]

The Story in a Time Piece

What Is Time?

Time, as a separate entity, has not yet been defined in language. Definitions will be found to be merely explanations of the sense in which we use the word in matters of practical life. No human being can tell how long a minute is; only that it is longer than a second and shorter than an hour. In some sense we can think of a longer or shorter period of time, but this is merely comparative. The difference between 50 and 75 steps a minute in marching is clear to us, but note that we introduce motion and space before we can get a conception of time as a succession of events, but time, in itself, remains elusive.

In time measures we strive for a uniform motion of something and this implies equal spaces in equal times; so we here assume just what we cannot explain, for space is as difficult to define as time. Time cannot be “squared” or used as a multiplier or divisor. Only numbers can be so used; so when we speak of “the square of the time” we mean some number which we have arbitrarily assumed to represent it. This becomes plain when we state that in calculations relating to pendulums, for example, we may use seconds and inches--minutes and feet--or seconds and meters--and the answer will come out right in the units which we have assumed. Still more, numbers themselves have no meaning till they are applied to something, and here we are applying them to time, space and motion; so we are trying to explain three abstractions by a fourth! But, happily, the results of these assumptions and calculations are borne out in practical human life, and we are not compelled to settle the deep question as to whether fundamental knowledge is possible to the human mind.

What Was Man’s First Division of Time?

Evidently, man began by considering the day as a unit and did not include the night in his time-keeping for a long period. “And the evening and the morning were the first day,” Gen. i, 5; “Evening and morning and at noonday,” Ps. lv, 17, divides the day (“sun up”) in two parts. “Fourth part of a day,” Neh. ix, 3, shows another advance. Then comes, “are there not twelve hours in a day,” John xi, 9. The “eleventh hour,” Matt. xx, 1 to 12, shows clearly that sunset was 12 o’clock. A most remarkable feature of this 12-hour day, in the New Testament, is that the writers generally speak of the third, sixth and ninth hours, Acts ii, 15; iii, 1; x, 9. This is extremely interesting, as it shows that the writers still thought in quarter days (Neh. ix, 3) and had not yet acquired the 12-hour conception given to them by the Romans. They thought in quarter days even when using the 12-hour numerals! Note, further, that references are to “hours”; so it is evident that in New Testament times they did not need smaller subdivisions. “About the third hour” shows the mental attitude. That they had no conception of our minutes, seconds and fifth-seconds becomes quite plain when we notice that they jumped down from the hour to nowhere, in such expressions as “in an instant--in the twinkling of an eye.”

Before this the night had been divided into three watches (Judges vii, 19). Poetry to this day uses the “hours” and the “watches” as symbols.

This twelve hours of daylight gave very variable hours in latitudes some distance from the equator, being long in summer and short in winter. The amount of human ingenuity expended on time measures so as to divide the time from sunrise to sunset into twelve equal parts is almost beyond belief. In Constantinople, to-day, this is used, but in a rather imperfect manner, for the clocks are modern and run twenty-four hours uniformly; so the best they can do is to set them to mark twelve at sunset. This necessitates setting to the varying length of the days, so that the clocks appear to be sometimes more and sometimes less than six hours ahead of ours. A clock on the tower at the Sultan’s private mosque gives the impression of being out of order and about six hours ahead, but it is running correctly to their system. Hotels in Constantinople often show two clocks, one of them to our twelve o’clock noon system. Evidently the Jewish method of ending a day at sunset is the same and explains the command, “let not the sun go down upon thy wrath,” which we might read, “do not carry your anger over to another day.”

This simple line of steps in dividing the day and night is taken principally from the Bible because every one can easily look up the passages quoted and many more, while quotations from books not in general use would not be so clear.

How Did Man Begin to Measure Time?