NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1807, 28 March 1918, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

It is said Mark Twain smoked 300 cigars a month. Spain’s Government officials are to get a war bonus of a month’s salary. Sixtv billion ■ drops of fog have been round to equal one-seventh of a glass of water. ■ The Tsar’s daughter Olga is said to be giving piano lessons to child ren in Tobolsk. A rubber shoe-sole, properly made, will last three times as long as a leather one. A vacuum street-cleaner has been perfected, working just like the indoor vacuum-cleaner. Iron embedded in concrete in Germany has been found to be free from rust after more than 45 years. A surgical sewing-forceps is a tie.* coni,i ivance which greatly faci- : ij.‘ "• -a-I vrundo. tfCvtnoven became deaf, and Jong before his death could not even hear the drums in the orchestra. .~aaa» The first dynamo ever constructed is believed to have been that made in the year 1831, by Michael Faraday. During the past eleven months 4,302,000 workers have received advances ia wages amounting to £l,507,600 a week. Coal is formed from decayed vegetable matter under at temperatures not exceeding'3oo deg, centigrade. Chinese breed stags for their horns, which are cut off when soft and used for the manufacture of native medicines. An aeroplane with seven planes arranged in a semi-circle, ’s .‘T'aied by its French inventor to be perfectly stable. Paper cups are becoming so popular that the glass workers of Ohio are threatening to boycott the soda ■'ham. ... m steel, otherwise difficult i dace turn, can now be discovered by the alterations which they cause in electric currents. A woman is the inventor of a horn to be carried on the rear of an automobile and sounded automatically when the ear is backed. When the first train, weighing 1,245 tons, crossed the Bridge it depressed the great central span only live-sixteenths of an inch. Lour ex-Lord Chancellors, Lords Halsbury, Loreburn, Haldane, and Buckraaster, are at present receiving pensions of £5,000 a year each. The South Metropolitan Gas Com-, pany have paid out to Hie dependants of 3,214 of their men who have joined the forces no less than £82,0(55 17s Gd.

For waterproofing clothing and shoes a French scientist has discovered that a solution of about an ounce of paraffin to a quart of petrof is effective. X-ray treatment of ringworm of the scalp is, in competent hands, the speediest and surest method. It should only be trusted to those especially trained. The title of doctor was invented for the especial benefit of the learned Inernius, of the twelfth century. The title was conferred by the Universe of Bologna. csts in Pennsylvania State LmvciSily show students of high mentality failing in examinations, and students of low mentality succeeding in them. The intensity of the radiation of heat ee.J light from the sun appears to bo not uniform, but variable, a fact that must have a profound effect on the earth’s weather. The Government requirements of ash trees for aeroplanes for twelve months are 200,000 trees? In the last few weeks between 8,000 and 4.000 have been offered by patriotic ~txp:ng out the cold, an inventor uses a double window, ttye panes being hermetically sealed, containing carbon dioxide, a gas which transmits heat about half as well as air. A woman in London has just died at the age of 94. When she was 20 her father refused to allow her to marry the man of her choice. She went to bed, and stayed there for 74 years. The fashion, of using platinum in jewellery has made it five times as valuable as gold, and has made

it more difficult to produce sulphuric acitl, used in * the making of high explosives. The raid on a gaming-house in Hare Street, Spitalflelds, London, resulted in fifteen men of military age being handed over to the army as absentees. One of them, Solomon Langerman, who claimed to be ■ an Austrian, was fined £lO. More than 100,000 waitresses, cooks, dish washers, and other employees where food is served in New York City are compelled to have certificates stating that they are free from typhoid fever, tuberculosis, and all other infectious diseases. x Potatoes are to be grown in Egypt for export to Great Britain. On the advice of the Imperial Institute, which has been investigating means of developing the resoures of the Empire, the Egyptian Government has made arrangements 1 hr l v *e swing of the best varieties. ( Over 50 triads H bark are now used to manufacture paper, besides banana skins, bean stalks, pea vines, cocoanut fibre, clover and hay, straw, fresh water weeds, sea weeds, and over 150 kinds of grasses. Also hair, fur, wool, asbestos, hop plants, weeds, busks, and stems or Indian corn, all kinds of moss,/ sawdust, shavings,. thistle, thistledown, and tobacco sto"ks. The sight which stirs all Poles is a grassy mound about three miles west of Cracow. This mound is 4 150 ft. high, and is composed of earth taken from all the battlefields of Poland. The mound was reared in 1820-23, to the memory of the famous Polish patriot and general, Kosciusko, who was command-er-in-chief and dictator in the Polish insurrection of 1792. \