IRISH TIMES ODDITIES:LUCKY FISHERMAN'S CATCH The details have just come to light, says the Cork correspondent of the Daily Chronicle, of a romantic story of a poor Irish fisherman's "catch" of a packet of diamonds, worth about £3,000, which were washed out of the Lusitania after she was torpedoed off the Old Head of Kinsale.
The gems were consigned to a London firm, and were insured for $13,000 with the Union Insurance Company. The company paid the claim in full, and believed that they had heard the last of the matter, but a welcome surprise was in store, for a month or two ago they received a letter stating that the diamonds had been recovered, and that the owners had much pleasure in refunding the $13,000.
It seems that an Irishman had found the packets among a quantity of fish he had hauled up in his net, and had thus made the most valuable catch of his life. Without telling anyone of his find, he sent the diamonds to London as an ordinary postal packet, where inquiries were made, and their ownership traced. The honesty of the fisherman has been rewarded by a gift of some hundreds of pounds. October 13th, 1917
THE FAIRY CASE IN CLONMEL
On Saturday, Anastatia Rourke and Ellen Cummins were brought from the jail to the Town Hall, in custody of Constable Minchin, and were charged before the Mayor, Capt Morton, and Alderman Cantwell, with having, on April 28th last, wilfully and unlawfully burned John Dillon, aged three years, by placing him naked on a hot shovel, on the grounds that he was an old man or a "fairy", left by the good people as a substitute for the real child, which they had taken from its mother. The evidence fully sustained the charge against Rourke, who was sent to jail for a week. The mayor, in passing sentence, said that as she had already spent a week in jail the ends of justice would be satisfied by an additional week's imprisonment. The act was one arising from gross ignorance and gross superstition. May 31st, 1884
MICE TURNED WHITE ON SPACE TRIP
Mice have turned white after going up 17 miles in a balloon, says a leading article on the biological problems of space-travel in this week’s British Medical Journal.
Animal experiments were carried out at about 17 miles by transporting mice and fruit flies in a balloon-borne gondola to that height.
Eight mice returned alive. “Rather more white hairs in black-haired mice have been noted that are normally seen, and some of them are thought to be the result of bombardment by cosmic heavy nuclei”.
One mouse showed four months after its flight, an arrow of white hairs that may have been caused by the grazing path of such a nucleus.
"The day when man enters space – and returns from it – may yet be some way off," the article concludes. "The mice are likely to be the first mammals to get there." December 3rd, 1954
BILLIARDS WITHOUT A CUE
"The latest novelty here," says a New York Letter, "is a Frenchman, named Morter, who plays billiards without made or cue. He uses his right hand, and spins the ball off with more force than could be done with a cue." May 30th, 1862