Out of the Way

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 98, 19 January 1935, Page 18

Out of the Way

CURIOSITIES IN THE NEWS

A night watchman saw a red stream flowing under the door of the Malaga State Lottery headquarters and rushed for the police. The police dashed to the spot and forced their way in. They found the office cat slinking guiltily away, after knocking a bottle of red ink off the porter’s desk.

One fish was properly caught when Mr. Banner, of the North Bay Board of Trade, went fishing in Lake Nipissing, Canada. He was dangling his bait, a frog, over the water preparatory to easting his line, when a fish broke water and leaped at the frog. It missed and fell into the boat. It was a fine bass.

A party of motorists were on their way to Durban from Capetown when suddenly a game cock crashed through the windscreen. Not content with having completely shattered the glass, the bird pecked a woman passenger on the nose, and when summarily ejected stood in the road and crowed with triumph.

An assembly of all the old men of the village for a mountain climb known as the “Day of the Ancients” has been revived in Upper Bavaria. Forty-two men, whose ages totalled 3135 years, collected at Ruhpolding for the occasion. They said a prayer. Then they started to climb the nearest mountain —which they all did without effort.

Incense more than 2000 years old has been found by archaeologists in the Balitsk sand bank near Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov. The incense, a mixture of pitch and vegetable oils, still produces aromatic fumes when set burning. It was found in a number of ancient black lacquer vessels on the site of a Scythian burial ground dating from the second or third century B.C.

“I was gardening at the time, and I forgot all about the train,” Jean Raviny, keeper of the Tuilerie level crossing near Versailles, is alleged to have confessed to the police, when they questioned him concerning an accident in which eight motorists were seriously injured. Their car was struck by a goods train as they drove over the crossing. Raviny has been charged with causing injuries by imprudence.

Plymouth fishermen are asking Lady Astor, M.P., to appeal to the Admiralty for special protection against the “unfair and severe” competition of French trawlers. They complain that 20 or 30 French vessels, much bigger and faster than their own, are poaching inside the three-mile limit and warning one another by wireless when a naval fishery protection vessel is in the neighbourhood. Another grievance is that while English fishermen have to use a trawl with a six-inch mesh, the French trawls are of smaller raesn. causing many immature fish to be caught and so damaging future fishing prospects.

Atta Amin Bey, First Secretary of the Iraqi Legation in London, whose romantic marriage with Princess Sara, sister of the late King Feisal of Iraq, was annulled by royal command, has left London for Rome to take up a similar post there. The marriage between the lovely Princess Sara and a commoner did not meet with approval among the princess’s countrymen, who declared that she had acted in defiance of her country’s laws and faith. The young couple wore married in Istanbul and came to London for their honeymoon, but the Iraq Government intervened, and the princess was persuaded that she must part from her husband and return under escort to Bagdad, where the marriage was annulled.

What is claimed to be one of the two smallest watches in the world, only half an inch long and an eighth of an inch wide, was stolen with about 50 other watches from the window of Messrs. Tyme, Ltd.. watchmakers, in Bond Street, London, by smash and grab raiders. Made of platinum, the small watch is valued at £95. Mr. J. P. de Trey, the manager, staled that the watch was put in the window the previous night. "It is the most marvellous achievement of precision work in the world,” he added, “and there are not more than half a dozen men in the world who could assemble it." The raid occurred about 4 a.m. Velvet pads were thrown into the street, and one still had a watch on it. A circular bole of about 12in. diameter was found cut in one of the thick plate-glass windows, and through this apparently one of the thieves put bis arm. The stolen watches are valued at £l2OO.