GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2353, 10 November 1921, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

The Worcester City Council recently applied to the British War Office for the names of men who served in the war, in order to record them on a memorial. Although the City Council offered to send a clerk to search the records, the War Office refused facilities. Recently the council authorised the Mayor and sheriff to take steps to obtain names. Several members supported the suggestion that, if necessary, the King should be petitioned. Mr J. C. H. Macbeth, the London manager of the Marconi Wireless Telephone Company, startled a luncheon assembly at New York by the description of recent wrieless experiments aboard the Marconi yacht Electra.in the Mediterranean, which led Mr Marconi and other experts to believe that Mars or some other planet was seeking to communicate with the world. Mr Macbeth said the apparatus intercepted wireless wave lengths of 150,000 metres, whereas the maximum wave length produced in the world to-day is 14.000 metres. He said the regularity of the wave lengths disproved the belief that it was due to electrical disturbances.

An exciting story conies from Oudtshoorn, in Cape Province, South Africa. A 16-year-old boy named Saunders, accompanied by a little fellow of eight, was following a wounded buck when they were attacked by a fierce ostrich. Knowing that if he ran away his friend would be at the bird’s mercy, Saunders advanced to meet it. As the ostrich was on the point of striking, he stepped aside, and, seizing it by the neck, jumped on its back. After a desperate struggle, Saunders managed to get a firm hold of the ostrich’s neck and to render the bird unconscious, and in the meantime his companion had reached a place of safety. / Bitten by a mosquito, Miss E. A. Abbs, the matron of the isolation i

hospital at Gillingham, died a week later. Serious developments resulted from the bite, and death occurred from septic pneumonia. . A French court has ruled that football is exempt from the entertainment tax, as coming within the category of “physical and military education.”

Recently the Hendaye-Bordeaux express dashed through three miles of flame. Almost before the frightened passengers realised that the carriages were surrounded by tongues of fire, the train had slowed down well out of danger. It was a narrow escape. As the express was nearing Audenge the enginedriver saw that the pine forest bordering the line was on fire. Pungent smoke was rising, and hid from view signals for which the train was waiting. The driver grasped the sit-1 nation. He must dash through the fire zone, risk a collision, or the train would be burnt. Throwing the levers to full speed, the heavy engine, with five corridor conches, raced on at 85 miles an houn. On arrival at Bordeaux the passengers hurried to the refreshment room. The plucky enginedriver remained on his locomotive to share a bottle of wine with the fireman.

The French authorities have found aeroplanes so useful for transport and other services in their colonial territories that they intend to introduce large multi-engined aeroplanes, which will be assigned, with a pilot and a small staff of mechanics, to oversea surgeons who have large territories to cover. The main section of 019 cabins will be equipped as complete operating theatres, possessing every life-sav-ing device that modern surgery can suggest. The surgeon, with bis assistant acting as anaesthetist, will thus be able to perform major' as well as minor operations just as readily in remote areas as if he had bis patient in a well-equipped hospital. It will also be possible, should a patient in transit develop any suddenly adverse symptoms, to perform a delicate operation in midair.