NEWS IN BRIEF

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2828, 30 December 1924, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF

About 270 tons of rails are required to build one mile of railway. Japan is- the only country where seaweed is cultivated for muman consumption. Of the eggs of the great auk there are only seventy-five recorded examples in existence. One lump of sugar contains the concentrated sweetness of about 2 feet of sugar cane. Billiard balls are usually made from the best ivory, which costs as much as £l5B a cwt. Beneath King’s Cross Station, London, there are acres of kitchens, pantries, stores, and wine cellars. A London lecturer stated recently that chronic laziness should in many cases be regarded as a disease. Poppies sold on the eve of Armistice. Day last year for Earl Haig’s Fund for ex-Service Men raised £25!),000. ' A wedding-ring lost twenty-seven years ago has been pushed up in a garden at Hadley, near Worcester, by all onion. London’s meat ration, according to what passes through her markets is about 2.})b, per head of the population every week. British typists carried off the high speed and “perfect correspondence” prizes at an all-Europe contest recently held in Paris. ’The fastest flowing river in the world is the Sutlej, in India, which rises 15,000 ft above the sea and falls 12,000 ft. in 180 miles. Women smokers now have accommodation specially reserved for them in a new express train between Chicago and St. Louis. Among the women of America, 187,863 are registered as 'farm owners, 770 as form managers, and 73,821 as tenant farmers.

Firemen on railway-engines in England just over half a century ago started work 15s for a 60-hour week; drivers received 30s. If the morning, newspaper train, which leaves London at 1.45 a.m., started ten minutes either earlier or later the effect would be felt in various parts of that railway system until 6 p.m. that day. Tusks of ivory which have been dug out of prehistoric ice in Siberia were recently sold by auction in London. Their age has been estimated as at least 50,000 years, but the ivory itself is discoloured and cracked.’

Geniuses have often come from large families; Balzac was the youngest of a long line. Napoleon was the eighth child. Benjamin Franklin was the youngest of seventeen, Wagner add Mozart were both seventh children.

Married couples who go to Paris courts in search of divorce are in future to be in rooms with iron doors, resembling cages, while waiting to give evidence. This is to prevent noisy and painful scenes such as have occurred in the past.