GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2141, 17 June 1920, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

An enormous, absolutely flawless black opal, proclaimed as the largest uncut precious, stone in the world, has been recently discovered in the United States, and is now in the office of a Government official in 'Washington. The gem contains approximately 21 cubic inches, and is valued by the owners at £50,000. The Willesden magistrate was told by a landlord that a man who had failed to get housing accommodation in any other way had at last succeeded in doing so by marrying one of his tenants, a widow. He wanted to know if he could .eject him as a trespasser; The magistrate said he must give proper and legal notice to the actual tenant. Tiie spectacle was witnessed the other day in a Berlin court of a prisoner craving with a low bow permission to be executed. The man was being tried for embezzlement. He informed the court that he had already ordered the axe and the block —decapitation by the headsman is the form of capital punishment in Prussia —and also a coffin, and would be much obliged if they would sentence him to death. Medical evidence testified that the prisoner was insane, and he w'as ordered‘to "a lunatic asylum. A landlord of Jersey City,.US. A., is charging his tenants for sun and air. The landlord has notified his tenants that they must each pay (is 3d a month for hanging but (heir washing on a pole in the backyard. The Commissioner wrote to him, characterising him as “the meanest and cheapest landlord yet.” He added that if the landlord continues “his petty larceny practice, accept my assurance that your personal assessment will be what it should be instead of what it is." And the pole is the property of a telephone company. The latest addition to the ranks of literary prodigies is Carl Morris, a boy of lifteen and a-lu\lf, from whom a London iirm 'of publishers has just accepted a 10,000-word novel, entitled “The Power of Love.” It was accepted on its merits alone. Carl selected a publisher haphazard from a list he found in a periodical, and sent the manuscript by registered post without disclosing his age. The publisher was amazed when he learned the facts about the youthful author, and asked for more. Mine. Pauline Rudolf, a young and wealthy widow’, proprietress of a restaurant at Berne, has successfully passed her tests as a pilot on a fast French aeroplane which she bought in Paris. She is the first Swiss woman' to obtain a, pilot’s certificate. She ini ends making lours over the Alps in the summer, taking with her some of her many admirers. She confesses that she wants to have a proposal of marriage above the clouds, as she is romantic, and lias already refused several offers. Another of her ambitions is to loop the loop. It is not often that a man has the ’chance to sign his own death cerliJicate, but this lias happened to a French soldier named Bregot, of Belfort, who, although in good health, has been officially reported as “missing,” and then as “killed.” He recently received a visit from a gendarme who asked him if he were Bregot, and, being (old “yes," asked. him to sign his name. The gendarme left, and Bregot then examined the folded paper, and discovered it was his death certificate. Bregot has begun what will probably prove to be a long legal process to prove that he is still alive.

An extraordinary story of how a man had a child thrust upon him by an unmarried mother comes from Bridgend, England. The man was in a public-house Avhen a young woman came in with a three-months-old baby boy wrapped in a shawl. She placed it on his lap, saying “this is .yours,” and rushed out. The man has since been saddled with the child. He has been unable to gel anyone io take care of it, and has been refused admission for it at the workhouse. He lias been spending his time wandering about the streets and. haunting the police stations, carrying the child in his arms still wrapped in the shawl.