Wow, the spell checker did not like this one.
Will Interlingua Smash the Language Barrier?
This universal language would destroy our modern Tower of Babel, a bottleneck for men seeking world peace.
By O. O. Binder
SCIENTIA salta le barrieras de lingua. Puzzling words? But look them over a moment—don’t they seem familiar, as if you almost knew the meaning? Well, you do! If you know Spanish, French or any Romance language, you will have little trouble reading it at first glance.
But assume you’re the typical non-linguist who knows only English, outside of gesundeit, parlez-vous, and some choice swear-words in Kurdu you got from a sailor. Look that phrase over again.
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Will Polar Waves Swamp America?
Engineer Brown fears the vast Antarctic icecap may upset the world and drown us in a great flood at any moment!
By West Peterson
FARMER Williams was plowing the field back of his red barn in central Indiana shortly before noon. A few more furrows and he could quit for lunch. Then above the regular clatter of his tractor he heard an ominous, ground-shaking rumble. He turned on the tractor seat— and saw a towering mountain of water roaring down upon him.
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THE TRAGEDY OF THE EXHIBITIONIST
by B. H. Leveret, Ph.D., LL.B.
Sending a man to jail for indecent exposure is psychologically useless and socially unsound.
MY young secretary came into the office very much upset one morning and said to me: “This morning as I was coming in on the subway with several of my girl friends a terrible thing happened. We were standing near the door of the subway car. A man got out. Just before the train pulled out of the station, this man stepped up to the door and placing himself in front of the win-daw of the door, he proceeded to unbutton his trousers and show himself to us.”
“Poor fellow,” I said.
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These people are so freaking cool.
Click here for a much bigger image.
A BOAT ON WHEELS.
BY JOHN L. VON BLON.
The queerest ship that ever sailed is a yacht on wheels, a graceful land-going clipper, that glides over the pathless stretches of sun-blistered plain, and carries her plucky navigators to and from their gold mine in the desert. Solitary gold hunters who have seen her white sails silhouetted against the bleak brown background in their aimless wanderings have brought to the outer world strange and ludicrous tales of a phantom ship that sped by them like a bird on the wing. The spectacle of a trim-built craft such as ordinarily belongs to the sea skimming over that barren expanse where not a drop of water ever falls might well alarm less superstitious persons.
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Garden City, L. I. Bank Does It With Mirrors
THE submarine periscope has gone into the banking business. It’s all done with mirrors, as a look into the Garden City Bank and Trust Company of Garden City, L. I., would show you.
To save valuable space on the ground floor, the bank set up its note department on the second floor. Patrons, however, still do their banking on the main floor, thanks to a periscope channel built into the wall.
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World’s Non-Stop Tractor Record Made by Californians
A STANDARD by which modern tractor farming may be gauged was set up by the Battaglia brothers and their caterpillar tractor near San Jose, California, when Dean C. L. Cory of the College of Mechanics, University of California, unsealed the gas tanks and stopped the official non-stop record of exactly ten days and nights.
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NEW ELEVATOR WORKS WITHOUT CABLES
Elevators travel under their own, self-contained power in a system upon which a New York inventor has just received a patent. Each car is suspended from a hollow drum containing a driving motor. Under control of the operator, the drum revolves and climbs a vertical series of rollers by means of a worm on its exterior, as shown in the diagrams.
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