NEWS IN BRIEF

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2665, 29 November 1923, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF

New York University has created 'a precedent by allowing the busts of seven great American women to be placed in the main chamber of that institution Hall of Fame.

Twice within a recent month patients with broken necks have been treated with success in a hospital at, Staten Island, America. One patient was a boy of twelve.

A beauty competition-for* elderly women at Turin (Italy) was won by a 96-year-old competitor. There were 130 entrants, one, aged 73, having perfectly black hair. Thirty of the competitors were single woman. The combined ages of ten of the eleven children of the late Mr and Mrs J. Smith of Burbage, near Hinckley, total 706 years. The eldest is 83 and the youngest 61. The eldest son died a few years ago, aged 76. Land tortoises are often purchased by amateur gardeners in England under the mistaken impression that they will clear the garden of insect pests; they are really vegetarians with a special weakness for lettuces. Joseph Gillet, a Lyons silk merchant, who died recently, left £l6, 000,000 to be equally shared bv one daughter and three sons. Besides Lyons, he had mills in Italy, Austria Poland, Prussia, and New Jersey, U. S. A. Malta is the most densely populated island in the world. Several species of moss, a lily, a poppy, and a nasturtium are luminous at night. The first temperance society in England was formed at Bradford in February, 1830. London has several underground rivers one of them being known as the Tigris. This is supposed to have been a ditch, widened by Canute to enable Danish vessels to sail round the Thames to Kennington. On Lake Superior, the largest expanse of fresh water in the world which has an area of .31,800 square miles, run splendidly appointed passenger steamers of nearly 4,000 tons ply, where only Indian canoes sailed 300 years ago. An aeroplane which dew with passengers from London to Hythe arrived at Hythe before a telephone call announcing its departure from London was put in before the machine left London.

Four Austrian youths intend to cross the Atlantic in a ketch 42ft. in length, which they built themselves. The ketch, with motor auxiliary, took fourteen months to build. Most of the hull is of iron obtained from horse-shoes.

Birds have figured prominently on the golf links lately. A skylark has built a nest on the fairway of the ninth hole on the Hurdsfield links in Cheshire; and during a round on the Thorpe Hall course Essex, a titlark and a skylark were killed by golf balls. Marseilles is excited by the discovery of precious stones inside fish. Recently a superb emerald was found in a dog-fish. Later, a fisherman netted a baVs weighing 611 b. On cutting it open lie found an Oriental turquoise of rare beauty and without fault, weighing 7)9 grammes.

An underground moving nathway for Paris is the subject of investigation in that city. Thirteen plans were submitted and five were retained for further experiments. Of these, four work on the principle 'of parallel bands working at graduated speeds, and the remaining one slows down for each stop. A tooth-brush which rotates briskly on a spring being pressed is the latest device for the care of the teeth. It can lie carried in the vest pocket. The brush, which is the invention of a Canadian, is fitted with a spring handle which, when pressed causes the rotation of a double archimedean screw.

A bottle containing a slip of paper on which was recorded the fact that it was dropped from a ship in latitude 12 degrees 7 minutes north, longitude 12 degrees 7 minutes north, longitude 76 degrees 53 minutes west, which is in the Caribbean Rea about 300 miles north-east of Cristobal, was recovered at Galetea Island, seven miles north-east of Cristobe). It bad travelled 290 miles in 12 days, about one mile an hour.

Londoners, in the opinion of Scotland Yard, are the most absentminded people in the world. Every day the Yard’s losLproperty office is becoming more and more congested with such a medley of articles as could only be matched by the contents of a pawnbroker’s storehouse. When a Daily Mail reporter called there he found it cram med with overcoats, hats, handbags purses full of money and notes, cameras, vacuum flasks, suitcases — and even portmanteaux packed with outfits! There were countless walking sticks on tiers of wide shelves from floor to ceiling.