“Zeppelin neck” is the form of malady now prevalent in London. This is the popular term for stiff necks, commoner than ever now because so many Londoners are craning their necks scanning the heavens for the enemy. Westminster Abbey has been insured for $750,000 against damages from air-craft attacks. Schoolboy Makes Record With Corn. The largest per-acre yield of corn ever grown in Becker County, Minn., of which Detroit is the county seat, was raised during the season of 1914 by a thirteen-year-old schoolboy. Becker is one of the most northerly of Minnesota counties, and its farmers have always declared that it was useless to attempt corn-raising because of the cold climate and short seasons. But thirteen-year-old Hilmer Carlson, who lives on a farm three miles from Detroit, grew an acre of corn this year that yielded 96¼ bushels to the acre. It was the first experiment for the Carlson boy in corn-raising. He was induced to enter by a prize offered by the Minnesota Society of Agriculture to the boy who should grow the most bushels of corn on an acre of ground. Without the experience of father and friends, who never had grown corn, the boy followed the instructions of the agricultural society, planted the Minnesota No. 13 variety, and grew a field of stalks that were twice as high as his head. It husked 95 bushels rough measure. When the farmers of the community heard of the yield, they declared it could not be true; that some deception had been practiced. An expert of the State Agricultural College then came to the Carlson farm, measured both field and yield and found the exact yield to have been 96¼ bushels per acre. State authorities declared the yield to have been by far the biggest per acre ever grown in the county. Ten Becker County boys went into the acre-yield corn contest. The boy who took second place grew 74 bushels to the acre. Indicating the unpopularity of corn-growing in Becker County, the State board records show that of over 160,000 acres crop area in the county only 4,880 are given over to corn. Veteran Fulfills Vow. Sixty years ago, when, a lad ten years old, he fell from the limb of a giant tree and broke a leg, forcing him to spend his birthday in bed, Carl Grossmayer, of Evansville, Ind., vowed that on his seventieth birthday he would blow the tree from the ground. Grossmayer, now a veteran of the Second Regiment of Indiana Civil War Veterans, kept his vow by blowing from the ground the stump of the tree. When he met with the accident, Grossmayer lived on a farm of 180 acres. Now that area has shrunk to a house and three lots. The elderly veteran’s only relative, a son living in St. Louis, came to this city to see his father keep his sixty-year-old vow. A stump was all that remained of the oak, but Grossmayer drilled under it, and, with a charge of dynamite, blew it from the ground. Placer Mining in Heart of City.