NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2009, 31 July 1919, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The name Socialism was first used in England in 1837.

France now has eight air lines in operation candying mails. Venice is a fireproof city, built of stone of Istria and marble.

Strikes in England in 1918 involved 1,096,828 work-people. Electroplating has only been developed during the last 50 years. The Greeks used a system of shorthand 300 years before the Christian era.

The British Ministry of Munitions from first to last turned out 256,000,000 shells. The normal year of 365 days always ends on the same day of the week on which it begins. The first meteorological record was kept by William de Merle for seven years, beginning in 1337. The canal extending from Haneow to Pekin is the oldest in the world, dating back 2,500 years. The world’s gold output has increased from £43,000,000 sterling in 1897 to £98,000,000 in 1918. A curiosity of the calender is that a century can never begin on Wednesday, Friday or Saturday.

In a recent fire which broke out in Yokohama, house property to the value of £1,000,000 was destroyed.

In olden times the Greek athlete trained on a diet of new cheese, dried figs, boiled grain, milk and warm water.

This year’s American winter wheat crop is likely to be about 33 per cent, more than the great harvest of 1914.

The salaries of British airship commanders arc placed at £I,OOO a year each, and that of their navigating officers at £750. On one occasion during the war, as many as 4,000,000 shells were fired on the. western front in a day, and the troops never moved a yard. The use of acetylene for illumination has reached such proportions in Denmark that nearly 200 different kinds of lamps have been invented there.

Argentina has been experimenting with camels imported from the Canary Islands for agricultural purposes in regions that are not suited to horses or oxen.

The total production of radium in the United States down to 1919 is about 55 grams, which is probably more than half the total radium produced in the world. China has an area larger than that of the United States, and a population four times as great, yet it has but 6,500 miles of railways, as compared to America’s 265,000. The number of white troops in the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force who are being retained in Mesopotamia through the hot weather of this year is approximately 29,000. At present the gas industry of the United Kingdom accounts for from 18,000,000 to 20,000,000 tons of coal per annum, or about one-tenth of the total home consumption.

By the shape of a singer’s head an American professor claims to be able to tell what the probable range and quality of the voice should be, and this without hearing a note sung.

Twenty-seven Etonian generals were recently invited to the college to receive thanks for their services. Among them were Generals Byng, Plumer, Rawlinson, and the Earl of Cavan.

Technically, china-clay is known as kaolin, derived from Kaoling—“high ridge”—the name of hills in China where the clay was first discovered and used in the manufacture of porcelain. To the Russians and all followers of the Orthodox Church, Easter is a considerably more important date in the religious calender than Christmas is to the English, St. Nicholas to the Dutch, or the New Year to the Scotch.

Nearly 1,000,000 under-nourished, sickly children of Poland and Lithuania, who have been without proper food and medical care and attention since the beginning of the war, are being eared for by the American Relief Administration.

One of the most difficult walking feats on record was accomplished by a well-known English pedestrian, who undertook, for a bet, to walk thirty miles backwards in nine hours. This he succeeded in doing with fourteen minutes to spare.

Tigers were responsible for 1,009 deaths in India in 1917, leopards for 339, wolves and bears for 280, and elephants and hyenas for 89. Of the 459 deaths caused by “other animals,” 89 are assigned to pigs, and 199 to crocodiles or alligators. The Siamese have a curious belief about sneezing. They maintain that the devil keeps a large book containing the names of all people on earth. Whenever he reads through it, and utters a name aloud, the person who answers to it is obliged to • sneeze. • *•. • -

England has entered the beet sugar field. Experiments before the war established the fact that sugar beet would grow as ’well in England as in Germany. At Kelham 5,000 acres will be largely devoted to beet culture, and a plant has been built. Statistics have proved that during the world war nearly 15,000,000 women actually were drawing pay for their services. More than 1,000,000 of them never had done-a day’s work in their lives. The number of volunteers would add another million to that total. One of the most curious of the innumerable varieties of fans among the Japanese is the iron war fan. This was invented in the eleventh century for the use of military commanders, either for direction of their soldiers or as a shield for defence. It is made of leather or iron.

Chinese gardeners sometimes plant statuettes of tiny men firmly in pots, just like real plants, and then, we are told, train live evergreens to grow up over these statuettes. The vines thus form a kind of robe for* the statuette men —their white faces and hands protruding from the green leaves.