NEWS IN BRIEF

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2337, 4 October 1921, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF

Diamonds were first found in India.

The first known moving-picture camera was made in 1890.

The American man on an average is taller than the Briton.

Paris entertains on an average 400,000 foreign visitors each year. Among the best needle workers in the world are the men of Japan. The Tower Bridge in London is to be repainted at a cost of £19,898.

The yearly cost of an English Territorial infantry battalion is £19,000.

The artificial flower industry in Great Britain employs over 10,000 persons.

A special fish is bred in Siam, and kept as a pet, for its lighting propensities.

French airmen are fighting locusts by spraying their breeding grounds with acid.

A suit of lfitli century armour recently brought the sum of £25,000 in a London auction room.

Krupp’s works, at Essen, have 40,000 labourers and 8,000 officials fully employed on peace work.

American women have the most beautiful eyes in the world, says a well-known London photographer. The president of Chile is about to introduce a Bill prohibiting the sale of alcohol throughout the republic. In the last twenty years 1,150,134 rats, have been destroyed in ships and warehouses in the Port of London.

Heiresses marrying Europeans have brought from America doweries amounting to more than £25,000,000.

A thumb lost through an accident has been replaced by the patient’s big toe, through the skill of a French surgeon.

Of 12 “deaf and dumb” beggars arrested in Paris on a recent evening, only one was found to be really so afflicted.

Specially printed at Scotland Yard, the Poliee Gazette is printed daily, and issued only to poliee officials throughout Britain. An X-ray apparatus to show just haw a hoot or shoe fits the foot has

been installed in a shop in the West End of London.

Over 1,500,000 houses xvere destroyed in Polish towns and villages during the war, and already nearly 500,000 have been rebuilt. Passengers numbering about 3,000,000 were carried on Whit-Mon-day by LondolP omnibuses. This is a record for any bank holiday. More than 1200 blind men have already been established in trades and professions through the medium of St. Dunstan’s Hospital. Having travelled 2/0,000 miles in the course of his duties, an Essex postman recently retired after 43 years’ continuous service. The estimated amount of income tax due in Great Britain for the year 1920-21, and still unpaid on April 30th last, was £40,000,000. The British Army in 1919-20 cost £521,000,000, last year it cost £211,000,000, and the figures for the coming year are £126,000,000. Boots made of a special patent metal, extremely light and cheap, with all parts replacable, have been designed by a Marseilles workman. The Philippine Islands produce about 800,000,000 cocoanuts in a year, and the Government is attempting to establish a great fibre industry. ■ «

Discharge of crude oil from vessels is doing such immense damage to fisheries round Britain that a law will probably be passed to prevent the evil.

A motor car hydroplane expedition with wireless and travelling laboratory is to search for gold, silver, copper, and other minerals in Northern Canada.

The highest sun temperature ever recorded was at Muscat, on the Persian Gulf, where the black bulb solar thermometer has registered 187 de-

grees.*

Phonoscript, a method of teaching the language involving an alphabet of forty-seven characters, is claimed by its inventor to enable children to pronounce any word at sight. An electrical apparatus has been devised in Paris wlifch will raise an alarm and terrify thieves at the least movement of the glass of the windows or show cases in a jeweller’s shop.

During 1920, 154 inmates of establishments for lunatics in Scotland made their escape. Of these, 61 were brought back within 24 hours, 43 within a week, am| 12 after a week.

Plants whose leaves are remarkaide for their extraordinary sweetness are being grown in a greenhouse at Kew Gardens. The leave 5 * are said to be 200 times sweeter than sugar.

Poultry experts, masseurs, telephone operators, shorthand typists, boot repairers, joiners, and mat and basket makers are among the blind ex-Service men trained by St. Dunstan’s Hospital.

A number of British officers have gone up the Amazon, and will spend two years exploring the uncharted forests of Brazil. An American scientific expedition is also far up the Amazon searching for new drugs. The battleship Dreadnought which was built at a cost of about £1,500,000, has been sold for £44,000, and is to be broken up. The Hindustan, another battleship, has been sold for £30,000 for the same purpose.

A cat which, according to the crew, must have been 25 days without food, was found in an emaciated condition in the hold of the steamer Blackheath, at Dover, having been missing since the steamer left Baltimore.

Preliminary work has been begun for the establishment of a great electrical power station at linatra, in Finland, Europe’s largest waterfall. The station will at first deliver 150,000 h.p., and later will be enlarged. Driven by the drought, a herd of wild zebras invaded Nairopi, an African town, searching for food. They ran about the main street, scared by the traffic, and did much damage to gardens. Several were killed by motor ears. Viscount Burnham has given 65 acres of woodland adjoining Burnham Beeches to the London City Corporation for the enjoyment of the public. The gift is in memory of his father. The woodland is to he known as “Fleet Wood.”

Twenty-eight “wives” have been married by a man recently run down by the Berlin police. He went through the ceremony fourteen times in six months, in each case disappearing shortly afterwards with the dowry so obtained. In Western Canada this year many cartloads of arsenic have been shipped out to the farmers by Provincial Governments to help to fight the grasshopper menace. The promptness with which this was done is said to have saved the situation. The final figures of the American census show the population of the United States to lie 150,710,020, and the total population of the outlying possessions to he 12,148,738. There are thus no fewer than 117,859,350 people living under the Stars and Stripes.

In 1920 —a year during which there was an abnormal demand for cycles and motor cycles for home consumption in Britain, -the total value of the export trade of cycles, motor cycles, tyres, specialities, and accessories thereof amounted to not far short of £10,000,000. Man can stand a greater degree of heat than any other warm-blooded animal. The hot room of a Turkish bath, with its temperature of 180 degrees, would kill a dog or a horse in a few minutes, but many human beings can stand it for quite long periods, and even enjoy it,