NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2049, 1 November 1919, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Norway has nearly 400,000 persons! engaged in agriculture. There are about 6,000,000 bare feet in Czecho-Slovakia to-day. The Island of Sumatra boasts of the largest flower in the world. Essex County Council is providing a cinema at a lunatic asylum.. The annual number of pilgrims to Mecca often exceeds 100,000. The total number of fixed stars visible to the naked eye is about 6,000. A temperature between 80 and 90 degrees is maintained in Eskimo snow huts. A mud turtle cannot stay under water more than an hour or two without drowning. A woman’s brain reaches its greatest weight about the age of 25, and a man’s 10 years later. Beasts of preyand poisonous serpents cause the death of 20,000 persons annually in India. About 21,404,000 tons, or onefourth the world’s shipping, now lies «ou the bottom of the ocean. It is estimated that about onethirteenth of the l entire Jewish race is resident in New York City. A man in Greenwich, Conn., shot rd a crow. Result —a man a half mile away was wounded in 11 places. In 1916 there were granted in the United Stales 72,000 divorces, the record being surpassed _pnly by Japan. The Japanese release pigeons instead of smashing a bottle of wine on the stem of a ship which is being launched. There arc six regular aeroplane routes in Germany, with daily trips bo ill ways, and many more arc being organised. The silence in the Rocky Mountains is so great that the Happing of a partridge's wings may be heard for several miles. The mini her ol’ paupers in London is rapidly decreasing. The latest statistics show a reduction of 2,791 compared with 1918, The sun is composed of sodium, iron magnesium, eohall, hydrogen, nickel, titanium, ehronium, and a few other things. October 13(h lias been a favourite day for prophesying the end of the world. This has its origin in (lie prophecy of the famous mathematical divine, Dr. Whitson, who, in 1736, sail! the world would he destroyed in that year on October 13th. Crowds of people assembled in the big open spaces of London on that date to see the “beginning of ihe end’’; but nothing happened, and Whitson became the laughing-stock of the metropolis.

Great wealth of treasure is known to be submerged between Landis End and the hazard, a death-trap for ships ever si nee the Phoenicians voyaged to Cornwall for tin. Now and again the sea has given up a little of the riches hidden there. Woven years ago, for example, a great storm cleared the silt-piled beach between Porthleven and Looe-Bar, and so much Spanish coin was picked np that it was called “Ihe goldmine” bv Ireasiiro-seekers.