GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2256, 29 March 1921, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

The Vienna police have received a remarkable inquiry from America, in connection with an inheritance estimated at £7,000,000. According to a letter, written to the police by Josef F. Skye, of St. Louis, Missouri, a man named Josef or Franz Barta died in America eighteen or twenty years ago. On his death the American and Viennese paper’s were informed that the testator bequeathed his entire fortune of £7,000,000 to his three kinswomen, Marie, Anny and Antoine Barta, who were living in Vienna, but whose exact addresses he did not know. Although the matter attracted considerable attention owing to the large sum involved, the three women were never found. That dogs have memories, and retain vivid impressions of incidents that happened long ago, was strikingly illustrated in London recently. During the war, Gipsy, a little foxterrier belonging to a French lady living in Warwick .Avenue, became well acquainted with airraids, and, when the maroons signalled that the German airmen were -near, she would take shelter, with her master

and mistress, in an adjacent tube station. Playing outside her mistress’ house recently, she mistook the report of a bursting tyre for an air raid warning, and made promptly for her old shelter. She was ,-een to disappear inf" the tunnel, and pass by several intervening stations, but all trace was then lost. While the mother of little -Jimmy Kethridge, aged two, of Birmingham, was brushing his hair, she found a nail five-eighths of an inch long in his skull. How it came there no one knew. Jt is thought he may have fa lien' on it. If was pulled out at the infirmary, and he seems no worse for his astonishing experience. An interesting record on that part of the Indian railway system has recently been accomplished. On November Ist the families of the Second Battalion, East Yorkshire, .Regiment were despatched from Peshawar to Cannonore, a distance exceeding 2.700 miles. Tt is believed that this i> a record for a continuous .journey in India. It was accomplished successfully and without incident, the train being ruu to fast troop time trainings.

A man named Will, stricken by insanity, -brought on by alcohol, barricaded himself in his house in a village near Phalsburg (Alsace), and opened fire on the passers-by, killing a woman, who was carrying a baby in her arms. The madman kept up the fusillade all through the night, despite the efforts of the police to storm the place. The next morning, when the firing had ceased, a squad of 50 policemen broke in and found Will hanging with a rope round his neck in the attic.

Founded about a year ago to safeguard the interests- of loea! bachelors, a Leap Year Club at Nottingham has been disbanded, owing to some very effective propaganda work by Cupid. Only men who were not candidates for matrimony were eligible for membership, and until a short time ago the club appeared to be in a flourishing condition. But at Christmas suspicions were aroused, and stock was taken of every member's affairs, with the result that only one was found to have remained faithful to his pledge. The pfe-

sident and founder himself had been the first' renegade. An elderly woman’s passion for hoarding gold while she lived a life of abject poverty has been revealed by the discovery of her body and a thousand gold louis in a wretched garrett in a Paris suburb. The woman, who was G 4 years of age, carried her avarice to such an extent that she would go for days without food. She always wore the samti filthy rags, never had a fire, and was never known to spend a penny. The gold was hidden in various holes and corners of the room. The woman had starved herself to death.