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Show fithcienee Writing Invented in Sumeria to Handle Priests Business Earliest Examples Are Office Files By EMILY C. DAVIS WNU Service. ce service. man could no long. Not TXlIEN ' er do without writing he ai if Dice Are invented it. Imagine priests in a Mesopotamian city in a busy temple, taking in herds of sheep as offerings, buying lands for the temple estates, making loans to hard-u- p devotees who cant afford to oiled, Youll Lose the Long Run JJing Odils Figured ,y t Mathematician J. Prof. John Xeumann, Institute for mceton, N. , ps anced even Study mathemati-- i applies his science gambling table. e ,as warned Princeton students lecture that it is impossible over long periods, n at dice ivories are loaded rer the i magic com- seven-eleve- n i is by far the most frequent but if it fi he said, 'poo the first cast, the chances ma doesnt reversed, and the stakes are iod as lost. hat leaves a .490 winning av-game is not fair," he e, so the .red. i convicts is Prof. s, Von Neumanns spe-- y game is won along each play the same num-o- J times, but at random, and opponent will lose in the long This -- a form of originated among and is as old as that ling well-know- n termed the intellectual pursuit to be merely a game of j cess that white, first move, can al-- i if black Is win, although to ttie theory, he can play sively and tie white. Two Kinds of Games, ol Von Neumann divided nes of chance into two cate-s- : those like dice where ex-- t hazards are Introduced b y and those like chess, poker, where ce is introduced by what the and said ce, has the b nent does. j the latter type intellectual sometimes needed, owng is e in the former no decision is .red except led out. he whether to bet, case of dice, he showed can be thrown in six in two, while 2, 3, and from only one or two the conditions are favor-t- o the since 7 s and 11 asult WOJ Id J )j s, the first throw. But is missed, repeti-o- f the first throw is unlikely, the seven is now working nst the player. The net effect is nst the player. Chances in Poker, poker, which he had to simplify derably to be able to analyze, Von Neumann stated that ces are one out of 300,000,000 dam any certain combination of cards, although several dif-- it combinations satisfy the e or four of jht, flush, win on k n supc e com-tion- bu full-hous- probability in games recreation with Prof. Von con-'u- s nann, who has devised in specialized geometry," ematical physics, and written elementary theory of quantum study of e ere lames. CrCC 1 Worms Kill Prey With jIIow Spears icir Dog oat dog in the world of underground, in ce attack of worm on 'ffl. One group of preda-- v worm kills its kindred ionolulu. realized d life spears that their mouths, suck their victims with hollow carry in y then just now. pay It is a science of big business in its earliest form, in the southern s valley over 3,000 years before Christ. The grpwing problem of handling so much wealth has the temple staff dizzy remembering what is promised, what is due Writing has to be invented. And so, it is. Archeologists have been able to trace back to its start in these cities of Sumerian people In southern Mesopotamia, because buried in the ruins are hard, baked clay bricks Inscribed with temple accounts. The oldest writing preserved in the world is baked into the oldest and crudest of these tablets of clay. Other Early Systems Lost. Whether these Sumerians were the world's first literate people may never be known. Other ancient peoples who had writing systems apparently began by using less durable writing materials, and therefore their early efforts have not survived. Writing was a city mans invention, in Sumeria. It was the development of city life that brought so much complicated finance to the temples. That the invention of writing was probably inspired everywhere by the peculiar, practical needs of urban economy, is the view taken by Dr. V. Gordon Childe, professor of prehistoric archeology at the University of Edinburgh. It is no accident, he explains, that the worlds oldest writings turn out to be bookkeeping accounts and dictionaries. The accounts are office files. The dictionaries are schoolbooks used in teaching young scribes to write. And if Egypts earliest writing had been preserved, it would, he believes, be of some such severely practical nature. Tigris-Euphrate- Earthen Jugs Were Coffins for Women of Ancient Russia Baku, U. S. S. R. Finding a cemetery in which women, in all their finery, were thrust into huge jug coffins when they died almost two thousand years ago, is reported on the Kura river by workers building a dam. That earthen jugs served as cof- fins sometimes in this far southern region of Russia, has been known. But the new discovery reveals what the ancient people and their burial rites were really like, reports Tass. It is now believed that the jug coffins were for women only, or almost entirely so. Men were simply buried in the ground with no shelter. The cemetery dates from the first to third centuries of the Christian era. One Girls Fine Garb. One young girl found in a jug was wearing red leather shoes and belt, cloth trousers clasped at the ankle with bronze anklets, a skirt and blouse and a load of beads around her neck and bracelet on her wrists. Dishes for food were in the jug, and small clay cups and saucers believed to be toys for playing house were put in the jug with her. The jugs, over 40 inches high, were closed with a large stone stopper and laid horizontally in the ground. WHY DID THE HINDENBURG CRASH? Cause Is Still Uncertain, Though Use of Helium Would Have Prevented It. But Uncle Sam Owns All the Helium! By WILLIAM C. UTLEY f T'HERE must be no more flying with hydrogen. We must make an about face. We must use helium. HUB Thus spoke Dr. Hugo Eckener, he who is known as the worlds greatest authority on lighter-than-- a ir craft, after being informed that Strange Visitor By FLOYD Germanys proud Hindenburg had crashed spectacularly upon completing her maiden 1937 Atlantic crossing at Lakehurst, N. J. There have been several theories advanced as possible causes of the disaster, but no one is yet sure which is the correct one, and it is doubtful if anyone ever will be. Sabotage was suggested, merely that no possibility be overlooked, and immediately rejected. It might have been static electricity which set off the highly explosive hydrogen gas. All aircraft are apt to accumulate it, especially when flying through or near a thunderstorm. But this seems unlikely in the case of the Hindenburg, for her ground lines had been down three minutes before the crash, and presumably all charges of static electricity would have passed into the earth. Spontaneous Combustion? Another theory, more complicated than the others, was that of Prof. Otto Stern, of Carnegie Institute of Technology, and formerly connected with the Zeppelin works in Germany, Professor Stern expressed wonderment that the accident had not happened sooner, due to peculiar action of the proton of the hydrogen atom. The hydrogen proton, he explained, is charged with positive electricity, which is offset by a charge of negative electricity in the electron, which covers the proton like a shell. When the gas is leaking under pressure, many of the protons lose their electrons, and race madly about seeking new ones. This causes spontaneous combustion. So rapidly did the flames engulf the ship, the versions of witnesses as to the cause were varied (fire swept from one end of the Hindenburg to the other in 32 seconds). Several insisted, however, the rear port engine was throwing sparks from its exhaust as the ship came to the i mooring mast. The theory considered most probable at the time of this writing is that these sparks, whipped by the wind, peril a p s , ignited hydrogen being valved out as the ship came down. It is customary to valve gas in landing. Whether one of the conditions cited in this brief review was the cause of the explosion, or wjiether the true cause has not yet even been suggested, one thing is certain: An explosion of the highly inflammable hydrogen gas wrecked the airship. And no such explosion could have occurred had the Hindenburg been filled with inert, helium gas. Thereby hangs a tale. The Germans are the only nation which has continued to make progcraft. The ress with lighter-than-ai- r United States abandoned it when a series of dirigible crashes culminated in the loss of the Macon off Point Sur, California, February 12, 1934. Great Britain said, No more crashed dirigibles! when the October 4, 1930, with 46 on board, including prominent ministers, at Beauvais, France. France forsook !ow d Employees of the United States bureau of mines at work in the cryogenic laboratory, where research data necessary for helium production and purification are developed. On the present basis our government is not permitting other na- tions to buy its helium, despite the fact that our navy is without airships to use it. The only airship we have left, the Los Angeles, which Germany turned over to us as part of the spoils of war, is over age, decommissioned and in hangar at Lakehurst. Hydrogen, the lightest gas known, is the most practical for airships, except for the fact that it is also one of the most explosive things on s Dr. Hugo Eckener, Zeppelin expert, who says all airships must now be inflated with helium. earth when mixed with air in the right proportion. Helium has not quite the lift of hydrogen, but it is safe. He 4, as helium is known by its chemical formula, is described as an inert, colorless, gaseous element of density 1.98. Sir Norman Lockyer was the first to discover it. During the eclipse of 1368 he detected its existence in the sun; It was a bright yellow line in the solar spectrum which could not be associated with the spectrum of 1 san-ai- 7 dramas are described in Drs. M. B. Linford and Oliveira of the Pineapple station. These worms, be-r- 8 to the great group known matodcs, were found in soils waii and other Pacific islands, 'etim lias No Chance. e group of these ""s has big, heavy weapons with e hollows. So quickly do they ! the flesh and blood of their ms bhat the speared worm has llr,e to struggle. 'second group has slender victims might con- hi ,y sqmrm around violently, however, is prevented by the Jzing action of the slender s thrust, apparently due to J lva of the attacker injected the hollow shaft. s,range hunter worms have rJln arnount of economic im-- ; because some of the spe- f ,lt become Ii their prey are s on J the roots of crop and ',ei Ltl f j plants. nce by Ex-ne- spear-bearin- i I I g A Stuttgart, Germany. new skull of an entirely type of ancient human being, older than Neanderthal man, has been discovered in a gravel pit at Steinheim, near here. It has been subjected to crit- ical scientific examination by Dr. Fritz Berckhemer of the Wurttemberger Museum ol Natural History. :fwm ' V'b.f 4 U ,i .i'A w Y i ii i L.. J Interior of the compression building of Uncle Sams helium plant at V Amarillo, Texas. Each of the cylinders In the foreground holds about feet. cubic was 3,700,000 of the Hindenburg cubic feet. The capacity to fill the airship Imagine the number of cylinders It would have taken to capacityl The skull was very little broken, and lacks only the lower jaw and airships when the Dixmude disapa few fragments of the facial bones. December 21, 1923, presumIt resembles the Neanderthal type peared been destroyed by lighthaving ably especially in the characteristic pro- ning over the Mediterranean. wide nounced eyebrow ridges, the U. S. Owns All Helium. nasal opening, the massive upper the Hindenburg accident has But low cranial rather the and jaw, the Germans that they convinced in arch. It Is markedly different no longer operate their ships can and wider, relatively shorter, being much more rounded off at the back, with hydrogen. And where are they and in having considerably less to obtain helium? The United States back-slopto face and forehead. In has a monopoly on all the worlds these respect It is more like mod- helium! Only In American natural gas docs helium exist In sufficient ern man. quantity to extract and fill airships. e Lockyer had suggested for it. shivering in the cold, waiting for the school to open, and took them to her home and phoned their father to come and get them. And no Germans Lucky in Fast. sooner had he come and gone with his pair of kids than Ilattie heard The United States, with her plenon the door. teous supply of helium, has used another knock A strange man was out front. He said he was a telephone it in operating her airships, but lineman from Clare, and wanted to know if he could come in and the Germans have always been get warm. Hattie and her mother asked him in and gave him a slightly skeptical about the Americup of tea. can enthusiasm for the gas. It is, While he was drinking his tea and eating a piece of corn bread, next to hydrogen, the lightest gas known, yet its pay load efficiency is Hattie and her mother went on with their work. Nothing unusual hap20 per cent less. Despite this fact, pened until he had finished eating and drinking. Then the stranger hydrogen costs about $2.50 per 1,000 got up and walked over to the stove. cubic feet as against many times It was such an unusual movement that Hattie stopped to watch that amount for helium. At that him. He backed up against the stove as if to warm himself, but Hattie rate it cant be wasted cheerfully saw one of his hands slide into his pocket and come out holding a in maneuvering a ship. tiny bottle. Up to the time of the Hindenburg lie Poured Something Into the Beans. crash, the Germans had been very was a pot of beans boiling on the stove. Slowly, There expert and not a little lucky in shielded by his body, the strangers hand crept up and emptied handling their many airships withthe contents of the bottle into the pot of beans! out losses due to fire and explosion. Her mother hadnt seen it, but Hattie was standing In such a position The Hindenburg was the 129th of a noble line (the official that she could see every move he made. She was startled frightened. An older person might have said nothing, for fear of precipitating number of the ship was trouble. That mother and child were defenseless, with dad ill in bed Of her predecessors, 10 were never But kids of Hattie's age dont stop to think of those things. 25 storm were lost upstairs. by completed, She let out a scream and then, impulsively, she darted across the and accident, 6 by causes unknown, 21 were dismantled, 46 were wrecked room and knocked the bottle from the mans hand. 11 to over were turned the war, by Her mother turned to see what was the matter. At the same time, the Allies after the war and 7 were the stranger reached inside his coat, pulled out a long, sabotaged that they need not be knife, and slashed Hattie across the legs. Blood began to flow from a surrendered. The Graf Zeppelin and long deep cut. Dazed at the turn affairs had taken, Hattie backed the Los Angeles are the only ones away, staring at the man. The man stood, knife in hand, staring back left. The old Graf carries on like at Hattie. Her mother was staring at both of them. For a minute there the veteran she is, her comings and was a deathly silence. goings between Germany and South Hattie Fought to Save Her Mother. America hardly occasioning comThe man made no other move said nothing. Hattie and her mother ment any more. She landed a t Frankfort from Rio de Janiero the were too frightened to speak. They began to realize the fellow was stark mad. Hattie sat down, took off a stocking and tied it about her day after the disaster, with 23 paswound. was and sengers, immediately The man stood looking, first at her, then at her mother. He grounded indefinitely. She will not waited until she was finished tying up her bleeding leg, and then take off again without helium. he walked across the room to where her mother was standing, Before the World war helium was breathless and paralyzed with fright, AND RAISED THE KNIFE. worth hundreds of dollars per cubic And again Hattie acted Impulsively. In an instant she was out foot. It was obtained from minerals of her chair and darting across the room. Reaching out quickly such as cleveite, fergusonite, grabbed the knife! thorianite, and other radioThe man gave the knife a quick pull. It came out of Hatties hand, active minerals, as well as the uranite used by Ramsay. But it cutting it clear to the bone at the base of the thumb. Crying out in pain, was not until war-tim- e that the she grabbed at her wrist with her other hand. The madman shoved United Slates bureau of mines her away, and knocked her mother down. solved the problem of producing For another moment Hattie stood dazed. The man fell on her it from natural gas in quantities mother, sat on her chest and began choking her. And at that, a sudden sufficient to inflate giant airships. change came over Hattie. Before, she had been frightened trembling. Now she became furious. A red mist seemed to drop before her eyes. The victory of the bureau is conShe grabbed up a piece of wood from the pile beside the stove, raised sidered an epic of science. helium plant it over her head and brought it down, as hard as she could, on the The first war-tim- e was at Petrolia, Texas, but the madmans head. compressors and other apparatus The Beans Were Poisoned. for extraction were later moved to The man rolled over and lay still. Hatties wrist was still Amarillo, a better location. Here bleeding and her mother tied it up lightly to stop the flow. They the government has a complete got ropes and tied the maniacs hands behind his back and then-w- ell plant producing helium from a gas then Hattie keeled over in a dead faint. field which is one of the worlds When she came to, the doctor had been to the house. He had sewed richest in the inert, up Hattie's wounds and she had never known a thing about it. The gas. doctor also took the madman back to town and turned him over to the police. They found out later that he had escaped from an instituNazis Never Enthusiastic. Uncle Sam tion down in the South, where he had been put for murder. In addition, And when they analyzed that pot of beans into which he had has established helium reserves in that bottle, it was found that they were poisoned! emptied reoil has he that the way just 0 WNU Service. serves. In the past steps have been taken Brides of Granna Island to permit the sale of Uncle Sams Annie Laurie Home Held helium to Nazi Germany, to insure Wear Queens Headdress by the Family Since 1611 the safety of airship flight, but GerNot orange blossoms but a crown The home of the famous Annie many had never been overanxious Laurie, the heroine of the Scottish intended for a queen is the wedding or insistent. Indeed, one version has ballad sung in every corner of the headdress of brides at Granna, Sweit that the United States offered world, is known as the estate of den, on the island of Visingso In helium to the Zeppelin company, Maxwelton, Dumfrieshire, Scotland. Lake Vattern, one of Swedens largbut certain German experts conThe ownership of this property est and finest lakes. Now over 300 sidered the expense of the safer goes back more than 300 years, years old, the crown was originally made for a daughter of the Brahe gas too great for commercial use says a writer in the New York Herfamily, which built the Castle of and, furthermore, cited the greater ald Tribune. lifting power of hydrogen. Maxwelton House, originally a Visingsborg and the Brahe church The President has been given dis- fortress of the Earls of Glencairn on the island. The girl, Ebba Brahe, was loved cretionary power to sell helium to and known as Glencairn castle, has a foreign nation, if he has the recbeen in the hands of the Laurie by Gustavus Adolphus and the crown was made for her wedding to ommendation of the secretaries of family since 1611. him, but for reasons of state he was war and navy. interior, Seventy-on- e years later, in 1G82, forced to give her up and marry dito Watson Davis, Anna was born, the daughter of Sir a According princess Instead. The crown was rector of Science Service, to whom Robert Laurie. The first Baronet placed In the Brahe church, where the writer is indebted for much of Douglas of Fingland, the author of visitors to the island sometimes see is admittedThere his Information, the original words of the ballad, was it worn by a bride of the parish. ly a war angle to this question of her first sweetheart, but the engageThe castle built by the Brahe famwhether America should relinquish ment was broken off, and in 1709 ily was destroyed by fire in 1718 and even to a limited extent its nature-give- n she married Alexander Fergusson, became an imposing ruin over-rumonopoly of helium. But there of Craigdarroch, a neighboring esby vines. The family is also credittate. Her picture and that of her ed with founding Granna, called by was a growing feeling that the airship line across the Atlantic should husband hang in the dining room travtders one of the loveliest towns In Sweden. Besides being famous be made as safe as possible. That at Maxwelton. There are 4,000 acres In the propfor its beauty, Granna has a great would mean extending to Germany the courtesy of helium, just as the erty, which overlooks the Cairn reputation as the Pear Town of Sweden. The original pear ti ce was navy has given them the facilities of river. In the house there are four its Lakehurst airship station, the reception rooms, two boudoirs, fif- planted more than 300 years ago in teen bed or dressing rooms, two a hillside orchard near the one only suitable landing field for airstreet of the town, and long was and servants States. United eastern in bjthrooms ships known as a national monument. Western Newspaper Union. mo-nazit- e, d Is Found in Germany any element then known. He suggested the name for the element, which is taken from hehos, the Greek word for sun. In 1895 Sir William Ramsay found that when the mineral uranite was decomposed by acid it gave off a gas which would nut combine Further, with oxygen to burn. when examined spectroscopically by means of an electric discharge, it showed a bright yellow spectral line which Sir William identified with that which Lockycr had found , Strange Man Came to the Door. from her morning's work, Hattie struggled more than tired Already a mile through the snow to post that notice. She found two small children thin-blade- d of from these small but in the solar spectrum. He assigned to the new element the name which LZ-129- ). ' 5ni-- Old Lady Adventure came in the Winter of There was trouble enough in the world then, without having the old girl with the thrill bag on your neck. The war was on and the influenza epidemic was sweeping the country. Hattie, in those days, was just an eleven-year-olgirl, living with her mother and dad and three sisters on a farm between Clare and Dodge City, Iowa. Her name then was Hattie McLaughlin. The flu epidemic struck the McLaughlin family In January. It brought down Hatties dad and her three sisters, and that left Hattie and her mother to do all the chores around that big farm. It was one of those days when everything seemed to go wrong. Mother had just come from upstairs to call the doctor. Dad and the three sick girls were worse. While they were waiting for the doctor the party-lin- e phone rang. It was the school teacher, down with the flu herself, who wanted Hattie to go to the schoolhouse and post a notice saying there would be no school that day. Hatties big bout with 1917. through the the deadly weapon, of Human Skull a kid absorbing a malted New Type k. contents y GIBBONS know, they say troubles never come singly which is T just another way of saying that Old Lady Adventure is never content with giving you just one sock in the jaw. I dont know how true that is, but it certainly worked out that way in the case of Hattie Rohr of Chicago. Z OU n , |