GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2328, 13 September 1921, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Two postmarks on pink paper, containing the words “British Guiana, two cents” brought the record price of 250,000 francs (nominally £10,000) in the Paris public auction rooms.' The buyer was an amateur collector, M. Verrus, an Alastian tobacco merchant. A wild man of the woods, who made a nest of branches and leaves in an oak in a wood near Mons, where he lived for some weeks,refused to vacate his lodgings. The police fired at him, and he rctailiated by throwing bits of tree at them. Finally they felled his tree and he came down with it. He is now in Mons prison. Believing “it is time that women of the Dominion should share in the advantages enjoyed by Rhodes scholars,”St. Hilda’s Hall, the only cue of the Oxford women’s colleges which is proposing to increase its accommodation in the immediate future, has offered to reserve a certain number of its rooms for women from the Dominions, if enough help can he given to make this possible. An appeal is now being made for the money required., A humlfttl of confetti caused a serious riot at a carnival at Peri- , gueu, France. A soldier ran after a girl and forced some confetti into her mouth. Her father tried to push him away. 'A fight developed, townspeople took the soldier’s part against the police. He was arrested by the military police and taken to barracks. The crowd made desperate efforts to release him and stormed through the city, throwing sjtones and smashing windows. There is a grocer’s shop in Colorado where electricity does ail the work. The grocer has merely to switch on the electric current, when the bins will open themselves,the scales will weigh the required amount, and a device will hold a bag ready for the purchase to be put in. When the scales balance exactly the current is automatically shut, off, and all the grocer has to do is to take the customer’s money.

A man who was summoned for arrears m rent at Lambeth County Court said there were thousands of rats in the house. “They danced a tango round the bed, and I eatcli five or six every night,” lie added. His reasons for staying were that lie had six young children, and he could not get another house. The judge made an order for possession to be suspended as long as the tenant paid a £1 per week. A plucky act of an ex-service man is reported from Bridgwater, England. While bathing in a deep ditch a boy became entangled in weeds and sank. Several men were in the neighbourhood, but made no effort to save the lad. It was left to oxCorporal Archibald Vest, who suffers from a spinal injury and has to wear a special apparatus, to effect the rescue. Plunging into the water, he succeeded in bringing the lad to tlie bank. Both were exhausted, and the boy was revived by artificial respiration.

A queer old enactment was citedin the House of Lords, when the appeal to decide whether a bet made by cheque can lie recovered from the bookmaker was resumed. Mr. Gilbert- Beyfus said that at the time of: the earlier Acts the tide of legislation ran more strongly against gambling. In 1745 the Act of Queen Anne was made even more stringfcnt by a provision that to win or lose more than £lO at one sitting or £2l within 24 hours was an indictable offence. It might be, added counsel, that this statute helped to swell tlm ranks of the Young Pretender whose rebellion took place in that year.

A message from Mons states that, as it had been impossible up to the pl-esent to release the torpedo of 100 kilogram which the Germans launched at Villahe Havay, and which, without exploding, became embedded in the soil to a depth of fifteen metres. It is intended to make another attempt this time with an electrical apparatus, which will allow the workers to carry out the operation at a distance. If this does not succeed the torpedo is to he encased in a thick layer of concrete in order to safeguard against the possibility of a catastrophe, as, if the torpedo exploded, it would destroy the whole village.