NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1959, 1 April 1919, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Birds and eats are subject to influenza. Mail was first carried by a steam railway in 1834. Wine is the most important of Portuguese exports. Portugal was the first European country to open up Africa, Light travels at the rate of about 186,213 miles a second. There are about a hundred'varieties of mosquitoes in the world, Kidgloves are made of sheep-skin or lamb-skin, never of kid-skin. America took 23,000,0001 b. more 1 British-grown tea in 1917 than in i 1910. i ? In Brazil there is no “middle class.” The people are either rich or poor. The Messina earthquake of .1908 was followed by no less than 1,227 after-shocks. About 59 deg, is usually considered the minimum temperature at which life can exist. It is stated that 40,000 deatlis have occurred from influenza in the Samoan group of islands. Icons, sacred image of the Russian church, are subject to tax under the Soviet government. Since 1914 Canada has shipped to Great Britain annually from three to five million dozens of eggs. The first attempt to manufacture iron in America was made in Virginia three hundred years ago this year. Six of the Canadian soldiers who crossed the Rhine with the army of occupation have already married German girls. The smallest known race is that of the Bushmen of Southern Africa, the mean height being four feel three and a-half inches. The first life insurance company established in London in 1700, insured at uniform rates persons between 12 and 45 years of age. Thirty-seven thousand Chinese were sent during the war to France to work behind the lines. Lack of ships ’ prevented sending more. Icelanders date the beginning of their year from “Yule,” December 22nd. They also reckon a person’s age by the number of Yules he has seen. One hundred thousand Japanese are now living in the United States; all.but five thousand of them,in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast districts.