First

In Paris, a group of French stamp collectors posted an offer of one million francs ($40,000). for an envelope that held a message to U. S. citizens signed by George Washington and was the sole cargo of an experimental balloon flight on Jan. 9, 1793 from a Philadelphia prison courtyard to Woodbury, N. J. where Balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard delivered it to Woodbury's Mayor. The letter, of which the whereabouts are unknown, is called the "first letter ever sent by air mail."

Foresight

In Montreal, having laid by a small fortune after years of playing a street piano in Peoria, Ill., Giuseppe Canzona tried to buy at the present reduced rate ten round-trip steamer tickets to Italy good for the next ten years. The steamship line accommodated him for five years.

Pitch

Cleaning 9 ft. steel tube that winds across California carrying water into Los Angeles, workmen came to the wilderness at Grapevine Canyon 150 mi. north of Los Angeles where the tube pitches down 900 ft. Inside the pipe 16 workmen went to work scraping muck from the slimy walls, lit by a string of electric lights. One man slipped, slid, clutched at the man beneath, broke the light cord. Shouting and clawing, the two men pitched down the steel tunnel 900 ft. into dark and muck, carrying 14 other shouting, clawing men with them in one big bundle. All were injured, some dangerously.

Syllogism

In Chicago, dismissing the complaint of Fruiterer Allen Brill that Customer A. E. Banks had hit him on the head with twelve melons. Judge Sbarbaro ruled: "If the melons had been good, they would have hurt. Since they didn't hurt, they must have been bad. And since they were bad, the customer had a right to be angry."

Marriage

In Binghamton, N. Y.. Supreme Court Justice Andrew J. McNaught granted a divorce to Catherine Koppe from Lillian Beaumont on the ground that, since the partners were both female, the marriage was void. In March 1927, wearing a clown costume, a man's wig and a van dyke beard. Lillian ("William") Beaumont appeared with Catherine Koppe before the Rev. Francis T. Cooke, saying they had just come from a masquerade, wanted to be married. He obliged.

Debt

In Louisville, Ky., having cut off the ear of Raymond Harrington, 25, two months ago because she thought him unfaithful, Eva Mae Powell, 23, set fire to herself, suffering serious burns from knees to shoulders. She explained, "I'm paying back."

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