NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2112, 8 April 1920, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Envelopes first -came into use in 1839.

Tiie greatest depth of the oeemi is 27,930 feet.

Colds are due to any one of six or seven different microbes. Germany built 810 submarines before and during the war.

No gold has been coined in England since October, 1917. London’s theatres, music-halls, and cinemas number 568. Venus the Goddess of Beauty, had a twenty-six-inch waist. A Hindu bride is anointed from head to foot with grease and saff-

Ordinary colds total 50,000,000 cases annually in the United Kingdom.

The Mongolian antelope can run at a speed of at least (50 miles an hour.

One oyster will produce 1(5,000,000 eggs, and of these some 400,000 may mature.

During a fog the air is polluted thirty times as much as ou a normally clear day. Needles wore first made in 1545, when the making of ten \yas a good day’s work. More than half the daily and "weekly newspapers of 1 lie world are printed in English. In the English language more surnames beginning with “V ’ than any other letter. The Eastern habit of secluding (heir women is still prevalent among most Spaniards. The wasp is affected by colours, even to I lie extent of slinging the wearer of unpopular lines.

Vagrancy was highest in England in January, 1910, since when it has steadily been decreasing. “5T is the least used letter, in ordinary books it occurs, on the average, twice in 3,000 words. Death was the penally for over 200 offences in England at the start of the nineteenth century.

The skin of the human palm has been found to be a very delicate and effective strop of razor edges. Coffee-spoons to the number of one hundred a day are stolen from one Paris hotel as “souvenirs.” In Germany there are now only 813 men between the ages of twenty and 1 hirly to every 1,000 women*.

When completed, one Newcastle engineering works will turn out one railway locomotive a day. The destroyer lleid was built in the yards at Kqnanlnm, near Boston, in the record time of 451 days.

Electric shocks can be obtained in Central India by merely touching tlie leaves of the electrie tree.

During his term of one year, the Lord Mayor of London is called upon to make from 800 to 1,000 public speeches.

EnglamDhad 10,306,000 acres under tire plough in 1914. During the war this was increased to 11,456,000 acres,

At a service ia Elect Church, London, the preacher was named Welsh, the choirmaster English, and an organist Scott. The dome of the famous Palace of Justice in Brussels is made ot papier macho, and is said to weigh sixteen tons.

In cold temperature rats arc .found to develop a sort ot. “overcoat” or additional outer covering, which grows very quickly. An eye callable of viewing ten thousand square miles an hour would require fifty-five years to see all the surface of the sun. , The first woman magistrate to preside in a police court in England look her seat on the bench at Stalybridge, Cheshire, recently.

Bricks are the most durable building material. The British Museum contains sun-dried bricks taken from Nineveh and Babylon. Instances of extreme old age arc more common among thos'e who exorcise themselves with gardening, than any other employment. On the Western front in France the British army authorities were employing in all 46,700 automobiles, of which 300,000 were trucks. Cleopatra’s Needle, the famous obelisk on the Thames Embankment, London, is one solid piece of stone, 70ft. high and 180 tons in weight. Eight thousand six hundred and twenty-two books were published in the United Kingdom during 1919, an increase of 906 over the preceding year. Thirty thousand starving cats arc rescued from London streets every year. They are painlessly killed, their skins being used for mulls and gloves. Turkish is said to be the softest and most musical-language of modern times, being even better adapted for musical notation and recitation than Italian.

Calculating ocean depths by means of sound is the purpose of a new invention, the marimeter, which sends a sound to the bottom to be returned as an echo. The Arabs of the desert have such extreme powers of vision that on the vast plains they will pick out objects invisible to the ordinary eye at ranges from one to ten miles distant.

(Swimming on water/'the penguin advances about 2A or 3 miles an hour; walking, it goes a little faster, but under water it is able .to shoot along at the rale of 30 or 40 miles an hour.