NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2287, 9 June 1921, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

■ In 1828 the first regular steamboat service across the Atlantio was established, the voyage occupying 17 days. The first steamboat had been launched 26 years previously.

Nearly a quarter of a ton of tulips cut in Holland early in the morning were "brought by aeroplane from Amsterdam to London, and then sent by rail to Manchester, where they were sold the next day. A State contribution of 20,000 kroner towards the cost of publishing the Danish edition of the collection of Greenland folk-songs, legends, and fairy tales, has been approved by the Danish Government. t

A young man conducting his own ease before the 'House of Lords made a speech lasting more than seven days;. He spoke 5.00,000 words, and the time of the judges in listening to the speech cost the country £1,400. The court Bible was missed at Willesden Police Court one day recently, after a woman with a baby in her arms had made an application. The Bible was eventually found in the possession of the baby.

A sea-tank constructed by the French Government has been tested at '"Marseilles. Fitted with caterpillar tractors and a screw, it carried its inventor, M. Foenquines, and five passengers, over land and water.

A fire which broke out in Hakodate, Japan, destroyed 4,000 houses, including the British Consulate, three Christian missions, a bank, and a number of hospitals, schools, theatres, and Government buildings.

The Paris Municipal Council has decided -that women tramcar conductors are to go through an endeavour will be made to find employment in the depots for such of them as wish to remain in the tramwav service,

Over 000 applications have been received for the secretaryship to the Shropshire Orthopaedic Hospital, which carries with it a salary of £4OO a year and house. The applications include an admiral and brigadier-generals. The British Ministry of Agriculture reports that 425 British farmers have arranged to grow during 1021 sugar Beet on an average of about 54 acres'each, or 2,305 acres in all. It is expected that 20,000 tom- of sugar heel will thus be grown.

The population of the world at the present time is about 1,050,000,000. It has been estimated that the earth can maintain a population of 0,000,000,000, a total which will be michod in the year 2,100 at the present rate of increase. British Honduras, which has a population of only about 50,000 to an area of 8,508 square miles, is in need of labour for the development of the colony, and an effort is to lie made to induce Jamaicans to emigrate there instead of to Cuba. Every policeman in Chicago is to be equipped with wireless telephone apparatus so siiiall and light that it can he carried concealed in the tunic. By means of it the officer will be able to communicate direct with police stations, fire-patrol boats, and lire stations.

Export of Chinese coal has now commenced, and the Danish railways, which hitherto have drawn their supplies from England and front Germany, have given China an order for 10,000 lons. At the same time it is reported from Marseilles that 100,000 tons have been landed there. ,

The exclusively Canadian wireless news service which was inaugurated by the Canadian Pacific Ocean Services to their liners in mid-ocean, hits now supplanted, on all Canadian liners, the United States news service, which has been discontinued. The present bulletin consists of Canadian news combined with English news received from the Welsh station.

The largest hell in the world, the “Tsar Ivolokol,” has never been rung. It cra_cked in the casting, and now stands on a pedestal in the Kremlin at Moscow, a place ever famous for its bells. Its weight is 198 tons. This place still lias the largest bell .in use, however, one weighing 128 tons, also two others, 80 and 57 tons respectively.