Posted inDaily News

How Mescal Came to the Southwest

This dissertation is the result of a question asked me by a lady dude the other day.

“What is mescal?” asked the lady dude. “A whiskey, a brandy, or a cordial?”

“Not any of them,” I answered. “Mescal is a hair transporter.”

The lady dude looked even dizzier than usual, so I went on to explain.

“Mescal is a liquid that knocks the hair off your head and sets it down on your chest.”

“Tell me more,” said the lady seductively, sitting down on her patio.

Posted inDaily News

Brings Fire to Water

Chauffeur Races Blazing Acid Truck to Extinguisher.

NEW YORK. September 24.—John Owen, chauffeur for the Kalbfleisch Corporation, manufacturers of chemicals at Ellzabethport, N. J., was loading his truck with muriatic acid at a North River pier today when smoke issued from one of the containers. Spontaneous combustion was at work.

Posted inMaritime & Naval History Shipwrecks & Nautical Disasters

Women and Children Castaways on Island

Photo of SS Aeon

Passengers and Crew of the British Steamer Aeon Are Shipwrecked In Southern Waters.

Victoria, B. C Cable advices from Fanning Island state that the steamer Aeon, which left San Francisco July 6 for Auckland via Apia and was considered overdue, was carried on Christmas Island by the strong currents setting in shore and became a total wreck. The ship’s company, fifty in all, took to the boats and landed at a small settlement, all safe.

There are four women and two children, mostly wives of officers of the United States battleship squadron who took passage to join their husbands in Australia. All are camping on Christmas Island awaiting rescue.

Posted inDaily News Science

Alaska Explorers Quit Point Barrow

Geological Survey Party in Arctic Was Believed to Have Been Marooned.

Dr. Philip S. Smith of the Geological Survey and a party of three Washington engineers who were believed marooned at Point Barrow, on the Arctic coast of Alaska, have started in canoes up the Yukon River to Nanana, the northernmost point of the Alaskan railroad, according to word received yesterday at the Geological Survey offices here.

Dr. Smith, J. B. Mertie, R. K. Lynt and Gerald Fitzgerald, who entered the Colville River basin early in the Spring after a sensational dog-sled journey over the Arctic mountain range, drifted down the stream to Point Barrow, the most northernly point under the Stars and Stripes, arriving early in September. Just how they reached the mouth of the Yukon from this village was not explained in the brief message received here, it is thought probable that they were picked up by some whaler that had got through the abnormal ice along the coast this Summer.

Posted inDaily News Maritime & Naval History

The Whale’s Strength

A whale striking Essex on November 20, 1820, depicted in a sketch by Thomas Nickerson

The most dreadful display of the Whale’s strength and prowess yet authentically recorded, was that made on the American Whale ship Essex, Captain Pollard, which sailed from Nantucket for the Pacific Ocean, in August 1849 [sic – it was 1819]. Late in the fall of the same year, when in the latitude forty of the South Pacific, a school of sperm Whales were discovered, and three boats were manned and sent in pursuit. The mate’s boat was struck by one of them, and he was obliged to return to the ship in order to repair the damage.

While he was engaged in that work, a sperm Whale, judged to be eighty three feet long broke water twenty rods from the ship on her weather bow. He was going at the rate of about three knots an hour, and the ship at nearly the same rate, when he struck the bow of the vessel just forward of her chains.