OMAHA 



4375 



OMENS 



Saint Mary's Seminary for Girls, the state 

 school for the deaf, and a public library with 

 65,000 volumes. Two noteworthy innovations 

 in public school work are the high school of 

 commerce, and the Fort School for backward 

 boys. 



Commerce and Industry. Omaha has over 

 300 wholesale houses, their business covering a 

 territory that extends east to the Mississippi 

 Kiver, north to Manitoba, south and south, 

 to Texas and Mexico and west to the Pacific. 

 Tin- trade in live stock, grain, lumber, grocer- 

 nd dry goods is enormous. It is the third 

 largest meat-packing center in the United States, 

 Chicago and Kansas City (in Missouri and 

 Kansas) alone surpassing it; this is the leading 

 industry, and it employs 10,000 people in South 

 Omaha. The city is also fast becoming one of 

 tin- leading primary grain markets in the United 

 States ; eighteen elevators in . Omaha and its 

 vicinity are necessary to accommodate the vast 

 movement of grain. 



Here is located one of the largest and most 

 complete plants in the United States for smelt- 

 ing gold, silver, lead, copper and zinc ores; 

 the value of ores reduced exceeded $30,000,- 

 000 in 1915. The extensive shops of the Union 

 Pacific Railway are located here. In the 

 306 factories a great variety of products is 

 made, creamery butter having the lead. Omaha 

 makes more of this product than any other 

 in the United States, the annual output 

 being estimated at 20,000,000 pounds. Other 

 manufactures include white lead, clothing, rub- 

 ber goods, steam engines, a variety of machin- 

 ery, poultry and dairy equipment and malt and 

 distilled liquors. 



History. In 1825, J. B. Royce built a fur- 

 trading station here, but the permanent settle- 

 ment was not made until 1854. From that 

 tin ! until 1867 Omaha was the seat of gov- 

 ernment ; when Nebraska became a state the 

 capital was moved to Lincoln. In 1855 the first 

 legislative assembly was convened in Omaha, 

 m 1857 the city was incorporated. Fol low- 

 am the discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858, 

 Omaha became the outfitting point for pro- 

 spective miners, and its importance was further 

 used by the construction of the Union Pa- 

 cific Railroad to the city in isiil. The Trans- 

 Mississippi and Int. rn ttional i:\po-ition was 

 held hen- in 1898. On March 23, 1913, the , -,ty 

 was visited by a tornado that swept through 

 the rand oi, causing the loss of 150 



and 1 1 unage to property amounting to 

 $5,000,000. In 1913 the commission form of 



government was adopted, with seven commis- 

 sioners. Omaha was the name of an Indian 

 tribe of the Dakotas. L.B. 



O'MAN, an independent territory known as 

 a sultanate, in the southeastern part of Arabia, 

 extending along the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of 

 Oman and the Arabian Sea, with a coast line 

 of about 1,500 miles, as great a distance as 

 from New York 

 to Omaha. It is 

 practically under 

 British rule. The 

 capital is Muscat, 

 and the govern- 

 ment is com- 

 monly known as 

 the Imamat of 

 Muscat, though 

 the sultan never LOCATION MAP 



assumed the title The narrow black belt ex- 



- , ... tending along the southern 



of imam, which coast line of the Arabian 



is frequently be- P nln8Ula ls Oman 

 stowed upon him in error. Oman is the richest 

 part of the peninsula of Arabia in mineral and 

 agricultural products. Along the coast the 

 mountains rise to an elevation of 10,000 feet 

 above sea level, and the fertile valleys abound 

 in sugar, coffee, rice and fruits. The area is 82,- 

 000 square miles, and the population, 1,500,000. 



OMAR KHAYYA'M, o'mar kiyahm' ( ? - 

 1123?), a Persian poet, astronomer and mathe- 

 matician, whose poem, The Rubaiyat, trans- 

 lated by Fitzgerald, has been sung into the 

 hearts of English-speaking nations. Born at 

 Nishapur in Khorasan and educated there, he 

 became royal astronomer, revised the Persian 

 calendar, wrote an extremely important treatise 

 on algebra, and is believed to have discovered 

 the binomial theorem. The Rubaiyat, mean- 

 ing a collection oj quatrains, was brought into 

 modern fame when Edward Fitzgerald trans- 

 lati-d one hundred of the more than five hun- 

 dred existing specimens. The love of nature, 

 the regret for the swiftness of life, the pleasure 

 of love and the strain of gentle melancholy 

 have made these verses among the most popu- 

 lar in literature. 



OMENS, o'menz, are signs or occurrences 

 which are supposed to tell of approaching 

 events. In a primitive stane <>f culture, men 

 always believed that spirits from the unseen 

 world wen- about them and that their influ- 

 ence extended to the most ordinary events of 

 life; therefore if one could read the signs aright 

 he could learn somewhat of the future. Tin- 

 to thr present day. To illus- 



