NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1736, 2 October 1917, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The heaviest anchors weigh about 77cwt. • Water-mills were in use among the ancients. Bulldogs' are more disposed to deafness than any other breed. Cuba has a scented climbing plant whose leaves are as hard as wood. The first church in Australia was opened at Sydney on August 25th, 1793. Camphor should not be placed next to furs, as it will make the colour lighter. It has been computed that about 36 million babies are born in the world each year. Jules Verne’s income, with all his tireless industry, never averaged over £I2OO a year, , On August 18th, 1810, Governor Macquarie issued his building regulations for Australia. In times' of peace London contains 16 embassies and legations representative of foreign countries. The Free Land Grant System in New South Wales and Tasmania was abolished on August 2nd, 1831. On August 24th, 1789, instructions were issued allowing laud grants to military settlers in Ausli’alia. The income of Mr Henry Ford, the American motor-car manufacturer, amounts to over £7,000,000 a year. In the fight off Chili the German ships Leipzig and Dresden fired over a thousand shells, and only seven hit. The amount of tobacco consumed in Great Britain last year was 4,728,600 lb. more than during the previous year. The average length, of punishment for officer prisoners of war in England who attempt to escape is four months. Titian began to sketch before he was four years old. In after years his favourite models were his wife and daughter. Blondin began to toddle across a rope when he was four. At the age of eight he performed before the King of Italy. Rev. J. H. Locke is serving in a grocer’s shop at Epping, Essex, while the owner, a member of his church, is in the army. Until the war, Belgium, with a population of 7,500,000, was one ot the most densely-populated countries of the world. Eight thousand eight hundred end five artificial limbs have aeon supplied to soldiers in Great Britain by the I’fusions Ministry. We vise an ave rage of'eight nmtehes each person a day. It takes the constant labour of 60,000 people to make matches for the world. Sergeant-Major Keys, one of the orderly-room clerks at Worthing (England) recruiting office is a Mutiny veteran, and is 82 years of The committee of the Chatham (Eng.) Working Men’s Institute hits arranged to issue to each member twelve half-pint beer tickets per week. The present title, holiness, as given to the Pope, dates only from the fourteenth century. Before that time it was used by kings and emperors. Thirty thousand gramophone records of speeches made by eminent statesmen,, appealing for support to the War Loan, are to be distributed in Russia. - Nine hundred women tram employees at Cologne —over two-thirds of the total number —have struck work. They demand higher wages and more free days.

The thickest-skinned animal is undoubtedly the whale. Nowhere is its skin less than several inches thick, and in some parts it is said to be nearly 2ft. , There was a meatless day once a week in the first .training-ship of the Marine Society, acquired in 1786. Each boy was, however, al-c lowed a quart of beer per day. Over a thousand “penny dreadfuls” of the lurid detective type were found in the possession of Arthur Fowler, aged 16, sentenced at Nottingham to three months for stealing. No person may establish a wireless telegraph station in the British Isles, or on hoard a British ship in home waters, except under a license granted by the PostmasterGeneral, Grey hairs at an early age are hereditary in certain families. It is thought to be the result of men with dark hair marrying women with dark hair through several generations. - The manufacture of Icons, the sacred images so universally venej Med by Orthodox Russians, is one of the largest household industries of Central Russia, where 2,000,060 are turned out every year. On board ship the day begins at noon, and is divided into seven watches —noon to 4 p.m., 4 p.m. lo 6 p.ra., 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., 8 p.m. to midnight, midnight to 4 a.m., 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., and 8 a.m. to noon. The highest price per pound ever paid for tea was at the Mincing Lane tea auction, February sth, 1891, when a 51b. parcel of “Golden Tip” from Ceylon was knocked down at £24 10s per pound.