GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

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

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

A football match between a Calcutta European team and a leadingnative team was abandoned after five minutes, when the police stopped the game owing to the menacing attitude of a crowd estimated at more than 50,000. The Indians then burned the grandstand, and the police had to disperse the mob. That intense heat had brought on a fit of midsummer madness was the defence put forward at Bingham (Notts) Session by John Douglas Sharp (26), a furniture painter, of Nottingham, who .was sentenced to two months’ hard labour for assaulting a young married woman, May Potter. Mrs Potter said she was suddenly tripped up by Sharp in a country lane, near the River Trent, at Holme Pierrcpont. In the struggle which ensued they rolled into the hedge bottom. She escaped, and fetched her husband from work. He gave Sharp a good hiding.

There is a quick-change burglar in London, who breaks into suburban houses while the occupants are asleep and picks up odd money and valuables he may lind lying about. He usually enters luilf-adozen houses in every road he visits. As soon as a door yields to his jemmy lie makes a Lurried survey of the downstairs rooms, and scoops up anything that takes his fancy. Then he throws off his hat and coat, puts on a hat and coat that he finds on the hallstand, and walks unconcernedly . away to another house, where he makes a further change of dress. And so on in every house lie enters. The object of these disguises is to make identification'more difficult and to ward off police suspicion.

James R. Spadden, of Pittsburg, lias had an experience believed to be without precedent. His black hair is turning red as the result of a barrowing five minutes’ encounter with a vicious ball. The bull tried to gore the man, but Spadden escaped its lunges. He was rolled about on the

ground, however, and severely bruised. Spadden found that beyond bruises, lacerations, nervous shock, and a ruined suit of clothes he apparently had suffered no damage, but 48 hours later a few red hairs were found among the mass of black ones that covered his head. The number of these red hairs increased until now the two tints are about evenly divided. Physicians believe that eventually the red hairs will (urn white.

When the llolland-America liner Rotterdam docked at Hoboken recently, a Customs officer noticed a young woman pass a coat across the fence to friends outside the enclosure. There was something about the coat that made the official look twice, and the second glance revealed a quart bottle of Scotch whisky sewed iu each sleeve. He told Miss O. A. Geier, who gave her address as 277, Broadway, he would have to seize both the coat and the whisky, but-that the coat might be 'obtained later by applying to the assistant collector of customs, “it’s a pity 1 can’t bring a drink to a friend,” said Miss Geier.