GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2358, 22 November 1921, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Twelve men in Portland, Maine, U.S.A., paid £574 for seven kegs of water, under the impression that they were buying whisky. The preliminary “tasting” fraud was worked by means of a rubber tube connected with a whisky bottle concealed in the clothing of the salesman standing beside the kegs of water. A twenty-three-year-old girl, (dad only in thin wisps of smoke from her cigarette, was arrested in New York by a policeman, who wrapped his coal about her and summoned the police motor ear to take her to the station. A probation officer reported that incessant cigarette smoking had affected her mind, and she was sentenced to thirty days in (lie workhouse. Two locksmiths of Rosslau, Germany, figured in a dramatic “affair of honour.” Wilhelm Silbermann surprised his friend, Karl Schneider, embracing his wife. He handed Schneider a revolver, saying: “You have destroyed my married happiness. You know your duty.” Schneider thereupon shot himself dead. Silbermann looked on, and then reported the matter to the police. A workman named Ferdinand Abe hanged himself with a cord from a beam in his room in Paris. Before he did so he wrote a letter, in which he stated that he had measured the cord so that each of his friends could receive a piece of it as a good-luck charm. He begged that the distribution should he made with great care. A visitor to Ramsgate, William Wheatland, a married man, was drowned while paddling in the sea. He was playing with two little children, when a large wave knocked him over and carried him out to sea. His frantic signals for help were seen by a large crowd, including his wife, but all efforts at rescue were unavailing, and when he was eventually picked up from a boat he was dead.

The Zeeland, a Red Star liner of 11,667 tons, arrived at Plymouth recently after passing through a violent hurricane. “The hurricane,” said Captain Howell, “swept along at ninety miles an hour, and I was compelled to heave to with just sufficient engine power to keep steerage way.” Ventilators and deck fittings were swept away by the heavy seas, and iron rails were twisted.