GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2119, 24 April 1920, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

The easiest job in London is that of a man who gets £3 10s a week for watching a hole in the pavement to see that people do not fall into it.

The feat of submarine El 4 in sinking the Turkish troopship Cynyd Jemal, with 6,000 troops and a crew of 200 on board, in the Sea of Marmora on May 10th, 1915, has resulted in a prize bounty being granted its crew. At the rate of £5 per head of those on board the vessel destroyed, the prize bounty for those on board the El 4 reaches £31,000. Since America entirely prohibited the sale of alcohol among her hundred million people, a few rich men who are not willing to accept the judgment of the nation have stored enough drink to last their lifetime, and one ease’ is given in which men are armed with automatic rifles to protect the cellars from attack. Another rich man has built a cellar of reinforced concrete, with a threeinch steel door!

There lately passed through the streets of London two women who had never seen a motor car. They were included in a party of nuns who had been living in strict seclusion in a convent at Noiling Hill Gate, and had lalely hen transferred to a new convent at A oodford, in Essex. These two ladies entered the convent before the motor car was invented, and have not been outside its walls during' all I lie years in which the motor lias* been transforming the life of the streets. A widow named Hewatt, aged 75, who has been found dead in Uft’culme, Devon, had not spoken to anyone except her doctor and landlady since the deatli of her husband and daughter 18 years ago. If addressed in the street she would turn her head away. Mrs Hewelt regarded Ufi'cuhuo as a very wicked place, and was in tho habit of attending church in neighbouring parishes.

One of tho most extraordinary suicides on record has come before (ho Paris coroner. A wild-looking man rushed into a Pans armourer’s shop and asked the proprietor to sell him an automatic pistol at once. The shopkeeper, however, seeing that the man was obviously not to be trusted with firearms, refused. The customer glanced quickly round, seized a heavy cutlass which, was within easy reach, and before the owner of the shop could prevent him. literally cut off his own head. Subsequent investigations showed that tho man’s mind had become temporarily unhinged. The police of the San Francisco Bay region are mystified by the activities of an alarm-clock burglar. Mori? than 400 .alarm-clocks have been stolon by this man. The clocks ;■ ve of all sizes and descriptions. The thief merely takes the clock and “passes up’’ other valuables. The theory that the thief was operating for a band of; anarchists, and that the clocks were to 1)0 used for time bombs was held tor some lime, and is still being considered. It is suggested the clocks may have 1 been mailed or shipped to some distant point for manufacture of bombs. The police have argued that bomhmakers would prefer to steal their (locks rather than buy them, because they feared the-police would bo aide to trace the purchaser if he bought many clocks.