NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2142, 22 June 1920, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Nntmggs arc kernels of the fruit of a tree cultivated in Sumatra, Java, and the West Indies.

Explosive shells, which wore fairly successful, appear to have been used by the Dutch as long ago as ■ 1588. In London the number of street accidents in 1019 was 19,85(1, with 087 deaths, and .18,998 persons injured. The human brain usually stops growing at about 50, and from 69 to 70 its tendency is to decrease ill size. More than 90 per cent, of the alcohol and alcoholic drinks ma.de in the Philippines are derived from palm trees. Every year the number of babies born in the world are as many as the combined peoples of Spain, Por« lugal. and Denmark. Peasants on the Swiss mountains use horns, often as much a- eight feet long, to converse with one another from a distance. The late Mr Harriman once made £400,000 at the rate of £50,000 a minute; and on the same day one of bis porters cleared £IO,OOO. Lpton, near Peterborough, one of the smallest parishes in England, numbering only fourteen houses, possesses a tombstone of black marble which becomes damp in .patches whenever rain is about to fall. It L regarded in the village as an infallible barometer.

In Finland, lawyers, before they ean secure government employment, must serve as policemen for the purpose of gaining practical experience.

Tea has been praised and condemned, and history records that it was even denounced as “a filthy custom.” But it has survived for 1600 years!

A doctor estimates that there arc 200,000,000 decayed teeth among the people of the United Kingdom, and that-nine-tenths of teeth disease is preventable.

In the manufacture,, of automobiles and trucks, the United Stales makes 85 per cent, of all that are made, leaving but 15 per cent, for Britain, France, Germany, and Italy.

A census has just been completed of the telephones in use in the United States, and the results include some remarkable figures. The number of telephones is returned as nearly 12,000,000, connected to 2.1,000 exchanges, whilst the length of wire in use is 29,000,00(1 miles.