Show Curiosities ot ailsnnminsr Arabic figures were not invented by the Arabs but by the early scholars of India Cleopatras Needles were not erected by that Queen neither do they commemorate commemo-rate any event in her history They wero setup by Rameses the Great The Jerusalem artichoke has no connection con-nection whatever with the holy city of the Jews It is a species of sunflower and gets its name from girasole one of the scientific names of that genus of plants The word pen means a feather and 1 is from the Latin penna a wing Surely expression a steel pen could bo improved upon Galvanized iron is not galvanized at all but is coated with zinc by being plunged into a bath of that metal and muriatic acid Pompeys pillar at Alexandria was I neither erected by Pompey nor to his I memory Common table salt is not salt and has long since been excluded from the class of bodies denominated salts Rice paper is not made from either rice or rice straw but from a pithy plant called tungtsun found in China Corea and Japan Brazil grass never comes from nor grows in Brazil It is strips from a species of Cuban palm |