AMERICAN NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 5 January 1929, Page 2

AMERICAN NEWS

AMERICAN’S DARIIRG LEAP.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 28. American airmen carrjing fast mail to various parts of the 0 nited States undergo many sensational escapades in following their hazardous 8 ocation during wintfer time parfrioulaa ly. Paul F. “Dog” Collins, known as premier “bad weather” pilot of the U. S'- Air Mail Service, leaped 4,000 feetl from his disabled aeroplane over th village of Millstone in Pennsylvnnii V ‘ about 0 o’clock in the morning a'«id landed safely by means of his pantohute in a small clearing , in the midlst of this densely wooded country lirookvillc. Collins ran into a line sqltalf that tossed his ship around like cork in stormy water. A criss-cross J.vind ripped a lower wing from the p lane and sent it into a nose dive, but bv cool thinking Collins managed to save the cargo of mail, which he was /Carrying from Cleveland to New York.* Before be jumped from the p'lane he shut off the motor to avoid an explosion when it landed. Hie nost' of the ship, which fell a short distance from where the pilot dropped to earli'i, burrowed its way into the ground but the aluminum mail bag remained (intact. Collins retrieved it from the wreckage and walked to Millstone, thirty miles from Brookville. A! garage man there supplied him with a truck and he carried the mail to* the flying field two miles outside the' city of Brookville. Collins, the survivor of many a storm and gale over that section of the Allegheny Mountains w thicli the air mail pilots call “Hell Stretch,” started out from Cleveland at 4 14.n1.

SYNTHETIC GASOLENE.

Germany’s new success commercially in making synthetic- gasoline from soft coal, and incidentally, also making soap from coal, to which the Stan clard Oil Company has acquired tlue American rights, was described to thte second international conference 0101 bituminous coal at the Carnegie In - stitute of Technology at Pittsburgh. The story was told by the man who is marketing this synthetic gasoline in German filling stations, Dr Karl Kraucli, director' of the German dye trust.

Dr Krauch said that coal gasoline may be changed in the making at will into “the most diverse marketable products, such as kerosene, gas oil and lubricating oils. If anti-knock gasoline is wanted, German chemists can control their • -method of transfdrming molecules of coal so that certain aromatic, basic substances affecting knocks are properly synthetised/j The result is to put into .gasoline a molecular structure that slightly affects the rapidity of explosion. “At present,” said Dr.Krauch, “we have reached at our Leuna plant an annual production of 70,000 tons of gasoline, of which 40,000 tons are obtained from coal. At the end of next year we hope to be able to raise the production to 250,000 tons. The gasoline produced by us has found a ready market for the reason that in all essential properties it equals a good gasoline dbtained from crude oil in the ordinary way. Soap is produced because the dye trust found quantities of paraffin from liquid coal on its hands, with a paraffin market relatively small. Dr Krauch found out how to overcome the difficulties of extracting from paraffin some fatty acids that make soap. One of these steps enabled the chemists to do in a few hours processes which formerly required several days.

Dr Kraudi said he Relieved the German synthetic gasoline process is analagous to that used by nature deep in the earth to transform peat and coal under heat and .hydrogeif pressure into natural petroleum deposits. “MISSING LINK” FOUND. In 20,000 miles of tangled, unex-' plored jungle north of Capetown, South Africa, dwell stone age men, ,who live hand in hand with animals, Walk like gorillas, run faster than gazelles—the “m*sing link” race. In this unpenetrated region where the lion is king, these “monkey men” hunt with arrows, live in holes, worship a grasshopper for a god and know not that they may be the answer to the riddle of the universe. Dr C. E. Cadle of the CameronCadle expedition of the National Museum of Natural History of Denver told of this missing race in an interview given in New York. Dr Cadle not ojly has seen them, lived with them and charted them but he returned to New York on the liner Olympic with a photographic record, including moving pictures, of these seed men of the human race. “The lowest form of this tribe are pygmies, who stand in their nakedness up to your armpit,” said Dr Cadle. “They represent the only true democracy in the world—where every man is his own boss. They take as many wives as they can support. As food is precarious, more than two or three wives is a luxury. Families are small, for the women kill their babies if there arc too marity. There is no daw except the poisoned arrow. They are a slight, wiry race, like all hunting people. They are vicious, unsocial and child-like. They are as primtive as their ancestors of a million years ago. Their only sign of civilisation is their folklore, which is in terms of animals, plants and the stars. “When a youth desires a wife he will pursue a gazelle for twelve hours or so to show his prowess. Then he will drive the exhausted animal into the presence of his intended. ”He does not ask—he takes his

bride. They go to live before a windbreaker, a crude collection of brambles.

.“We believe that this race will be one of the important links in the proof of man’s evolution from animals. I believe that within twenty years science will have an indisputable chain of evidence to support the evolutionary theory, which practically all scientific men firmly believe in.”

BABY WITH TATL

The horror-stricken seventeen-year old mother of a baby horn with a tail fled from her 21-year-old husband at Knoxville, Tennessee. She said she wished the baby to grow to womanhood and he exhibited as a human freak. When born late in October in a Knoxville hospital the baby had a tail seven inches long. In three works the tail had grown half an inch. Dr. Horace Brown, surgeon at Knox vilk?,. said he expected to operate on the unfortunate infant and promised to send the tail to Dr. Adolph Schultz, professor of physical anthropology in Johns Hopkins, who is associated with the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Dr. Schultz had previously desired to get possession of the tail for study, as only. 25 tail persons are known to medical science. X-ray pictures of the tail showed that, it has no bones and is not directly connected with the spinal column. Physicians thought the operation would not be serious—that is for the infant.

RADIO KILLS INVENTOR,

Dr. Sabin Von Sochocky died in East Orange, New Jersey, a victim of the luminous paint which he had invented 1 for the painting of watch dials in the plant of the United States Radium Corporation, formerly located in. Orange. Deaths of half a dozen women, who were employed in the plant to paint watch dials, have been attributed to the assimilation of radio active substances. Aplastic anaemia was given as the cause of the inventor’s death. He had been ill for several months and eleven blood transfusions had been restored to in an effort to save his life. Last May the United States Radium Corporation five women alleged to be suffering from the same poisoning the sum of 10,000 dollars lieach, annuities of 600 dollars each and [the cost of legal expences and medical j treatment. The allowances were made ,in settlement of suits for 1,250,000 dok ,lars. Physicians now said that deposits of radio-active matter in the bones ♦of the victims had stilled the action of the blood supply agencies of the body and caused death of Dr. Sochocky who was technical director of the U.S Radium Corporation. He had been aissocinted for many years with institutions using radium in the treatment •of disease. He was 45 years old and a native of Austria. He came to the ItT.S.A. 12 years ago and invented his fprmula of luminous paint in 1920.