NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 2899, 20 June 1925, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Machines are now in use in America. A coin placed in the slot starts the brushes, polish is applied automatically, and a boot is cleaned in forty seconds. After a severe earthquake shock, accompanied by heavy rumblings, which occurred in Switzerland, people who were listening to a sermon being broadcasted from Lausanne station were able to hear with much greater distinctness. Out of one hundred “average' men of twenty-five years of age, thirty-six fail to reach the age of sixty-five. Of those who survive, it is estimated that, no fewer than fifty-three are dependent on children, etc., for their living. Mr A. Lord, a Ilighgate magistrate, who lives at Friern Barnet, dreamt that his ollice in London had been burgled. He was awakened out of his dream by the tele-phone-hell ringing, and was informed that a man had been caught in his office.

An old "family I rot*" Ih*(1 quill, vdlow will! age, embroidered with names and dales recording births, marriages, and deaths in ihc taniilv, established in ihe Wisconsin Courts the claim of William Cass n, a .€I2OO estate left by his lather. A lire that destroyed the district in which the .Messina courts ol justice are situated, and incidentally consumed all the papers relating to police court eases in the town and province, is believed to ha.\ e been the work of criminals anxious to have their records destroyed. Over the north door ol a little church in an exposed North England village is carved the inscription: “This is the gate ol heaven.” A recent visitor to the village found the following notice nailed on the door itself: “This entrance is closed during the winter months." A recent race for home-made aeroplanes was won by a French mechanic, who built his machine out of a motor-cycle side-car, a second hand motor-cycle engine, and odds and ends of scrap. It was a queer looking plane, but it actually Hew twentv-live miles at filly miles an hour,'and then Hew .150 miles across