NEWS IN BRIEF

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2260, 7 April 1921, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF

A Canadian water weed, which spread so rapidly that in a few years it had choked up streanls and rivers, is said to have been introduced into Britain on the feel of. migrant wading birds. The Danish Profiteering Committee has decided that Danish chocolate factories must pay collectively a fine of 1,090.000 kroner (about £50,000) for charging an excessive price for chocolates.

Thunder can be heard at no greater distance than 18 miles, and generally not more than nine miles. The duration of the longest roll og thunder that has been accurately noted was 45 seconds. At the examination of the 5,000 documents connected with the Landru case cannot be completed by March, the trial of the French “bincheat'd” has been postponed until, at the earliest, May 1. “Pay weddings” are not uncommon in some of the rural districts of Germany. All the guests pay a fixed sum for llie entertainment, and the receipts are used to furnish a home for the bridal couple.

Owing to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Sweden, 4,000 head of cattle, nearly 2,000 pigs, and 400 sheep have had to be killed. The Government has already paid out about £235,000 in compensation. For disfiguring the natural beauty of the lanscape at Langley, Bucks, by erecting advertisement hoardings, Messrs H. J. Heinz and Co., of London, were fined 5s and costs at Slough, and the hoardings arc to be removed.

A box of chocolates which wellknown English chocolate manufacturers sold at 7s per pound, and for which they received a summons for overcharging from a Profiteering Committee, Ims cost them £4,000 to date for court proceedings.

Dr. Banmdo’s Homes have resell - ed during the 50 years of their existence, over 00,000 distilute bov* and'girls, and afforded them a proper start in life. Of these, some 10,715 joined the forces during the war, and 070 made the supreme sac-

rifice. For a small body the moon lias some astonishingly big mountains. They are bigger than any we have on the earth. There is a mountain range in the extreme south of the moon whose peaks are said to be from 30,000 ft., to 30,000 ft. high. Mount Everest can boast only 29,140 ft.

One of the must interesting points about a telephone system is that the cost of running it does not get cheaper per subscriber as it grows. The reason of this lies in the extreme complexity which arises as the system extends. While some costs fall with the growth, these are more than counter-balanced in other directions.

The flrsl hopital in Europe was built as long ago as A.D. 380, the celebrated Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem being founded a hundred years later. In England the sick were received and treated in the monasteries, and as late as the sixteenth century the arts of medicine and surgery were almost exclusively practised by the religious orders.

Of all the poisons to the use of which history hears witness, there lias never‘been one si popular with poisoners, murderers, and evil-do-ers ns arsenic. Hundreds of years before the Christian era it was used to bring about death, and it lias always been the favourite medium of female poisoners, kings, prelates, and nobles. One of the richest oilfields yet discovered has just been reported near Fort Norman, Canada, almost on the edge of the A retie Circle: It is 1,200 miles from the nearest railroad. 900 mile- even from a river loading point, and a pipe line to it would cost about £10,000,000. Restoration of the northern and eastern railway systems of 1 ranee, now completed, necessitated the reeonstruction of 3,479 miles of single tracks, 1802 miles of double track, 1.510 bridges, 590 buildings and signal stations, and 12 tunnels. I lie service given before the war lias been resumed.

It is estimated that the total number of unemployed in district i- in the neighbourhood, of 1(10,000. Relief money is being issued by works societies at .(lie rate of 2 : , ! francs for men. Ij francs for women, and the same amount tor every child under sixteen years of age. , In a single day London's trains travel a distance equal to nine circuits of the earth at the equator: the aggregate days' journey of her ’buses is equal to a trip to the moon, with 70,000 miles lo spare, and in 24 hours London’s trams cover a - distance equivalent to a dozen return journeys from London to Constantinople.