HEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2134, 29 May 1920, Page 4

HEWS IN BRIEF.

A Japanese tailor holds Ins cloth with his toes.

FiveUs considered a sacred num- -f her among the Chinese. Polar bears are the most dangerous animals in captivity. Some of the icciields of Greenland are half a mile in thickness.

The first experiment in long-dist-ance radio telephoning was made in 1014.

Johnny Trundle, the fat hoy oi Peekin’m, weighed ilOst 41l> at the age of live.

A single bakery in London hakes over 30.000,000 two-])ound loaves of bread it year. Prices of wearing apparel in Great Britain are about 500 per cent, higher than in 1014. British Government departments during last year used paper costing over £3,500,000. The production of potash in Germany last January reached the record total of 550,000 tons. Our earth in its revolution around ihe sun docs something like eighteen miles every seeond of lime. Carmine, Crimson, scarlet, ai|o crimson lake are among the line colours furnished by the cochineal insects. •. Hod-haired people, it is staled,-are less liahie to become bald than those with hail' of any other colour. American foreign trade for January, 1020, aggregated £241.320,009. one of the highest monthly totals in history. The shooter fish brings down injects trotyl a distance of from one to four f'ek by squirting them "with water from its mouth. Napoleon’s'handwrifing was so illegible liial his letters from Germany to Josephine were at lirsl taken for rough maps of the seal ’ofwar. Before the war then’ were 500 potato factories in operation m Germany. The present estimate is that then' are now over 2,000 there.. . In a rigid airship structure, excluding the machinery, there is a total length of structural materia! of 20 miles, and over rivets. The Monument in London sways mi much in (he wind that it cannot he used as an astronomical ohsei ,- atory, the very purpose for which it was built. So vast is the present store of Giver in the l ulled Slates treasUi'. vault that the walls are bulging out and part of the budding itself threatens to crumble. 'fhe British Government has placed a fund of £1,000,000 at the disposal of its research department to enable it to encourage industries to lake up research. British botanists have succeeded in breeding a new wheat known as “yoeman,” which has yielded. 9b bushels to the acre—three times an ordinary crop.

In olden limes ■rhinocerou.-. horns were employed for drinking cups by royal personages, the notion being Glut poison put into them would show itself by bubbling.

The Kalahari Desert in Africa is nearly as big as Great Britain, covering' 120,1)00 square miles. The Great and Little Karroo Deserts cover 100.000 square miles. A French scientist has invented a method of produeng and using ti.r industry pressures equal to about seven tons to the square inch, or about 1,000 atmospheres.' The British Government chemist and his stall analysed 184,392 samples of tobacco during last year, including 19 smoking mixtures which contained no tobacco at all!

The speed of a racehorse appears to greatest advantage in such short distances as the Derby, v. Inch Lemberg won in 1910 in two minutes and thirty-live and one-fifth seconds,

The springs of modern beds were antiwipated by the ancient .Egyptians, who had a Hat case made of traneverse strips of bdmboo, which gave, a spring to the bed when covered with a mat.

According to a review of the British labour situation by the London Economist, the peak of unemployment in England was readied in May, 1919, when the total of■ idle persons was reported as 1,093,400. Seme of the huge chimney stacks in the mining region of Arizona each belches forth daily enough copper in the "form of debris carried by the stack gus>es to amount to a total of anvwhere from throe to nine toils per day. On all the great lakes of China are found floating islands, which arc enormous rafts of bamboo overlaid with earth, and bearing on the surface of the water pretty houses and gardens. They are in fact aquatic farms, bearing crops of rice and vegetables.

Ladies were no strangers to our early deliberative assemblies, saws an English writer. In the reign of Edward I. the Abbess of Wilton, the Abbess of Shaftesbury, and the Abbess of St. Mary of Winchester wore summoned to I\estiuinster, and in the reign of Edward 111., the Countess of Norfolk, the Countess of Ormonde, the Countess of Pembroke and the Countess of Oxford were called to attend.