NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1826, 14 May 1918, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Iceland holds the record for ecu tellurians.

Punctuation marks were first used in 1490.

There arc 270 active volcanoes in the world.

There are 5(50 war charities registered in London.

The skeleton of an average whale weighs about 2 tons.

The life of a North Atlantic iceberg is often 200 years. The Kimberley diamond holds were discovered in 1871.

England was first divided into shires in the seventh century A.D. The history of China is assumed to date from 80,000 to 100,000 B.C.

Slow rivers run four miles an hour; rapid ones average seven miles.

A fog in the Atlantic Ocean is generally about thirty miles in diameter. The violin varies more with the weather than does any other instrument. ftfUMKiMUA.. In Amsterdam there is one factory which cuts 400,000 diamonds every year. Among (lowers, the chrysanthemum is said to live longest after being cut.. The first English temperance hall was built in Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1837. In the year 1800 there were only al hospitals in Great Britain and Ireland. Male enemy aliens to the number of 39,500 have registered in New York City.

Bank of England notes are numbered backwards from 10,000, hence the figures 00,001.

The Ameer of Afghanistan has a subsiily of £120,000 a year from the Indian Government.

The him of a soap bubble is so thin that fifty millions of them would be required to make one inch. Shark meat has recently been included in banquet menus in the East, and has been pronounced as very palatable. The brine springs at Droitwieh (Eng.), are richer in salt than any oilier water in the world —even than the Dead Sea.

Nearly 20,000 British South African natives have been, recruited for active service behind the lines in Prance and Flanders.

From Land’s End to John o’ Groats it is 430 miles, A cyclist has covered the distance in 2 days 19 hours 50 minutes.

There are 121,000 British subjects registered in the United States between the ages of 21 and 31; 19,000 have enlisted.

On the Duteh-Belgian frontier, near Selzaete, an iron lighthouse hav, the Yaderland reports, been

erected to indicate the boundary line fb airmen. As a war measure, in order to increase production, the Canadian Government has taken the duty off cattle coming into Canada. The present duty is 32fr per cent.