NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 2964, 19 November 1925, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

A gas turbine engine which, it is claimed, may revolutionise automobile and aeroplane motors, is being perfected by a French engineer. It is said to combine the advantages of the explosive gas motor and the steam turbine. The engine runs smoothly at the rate of 1500'' revolutions a minute.

Held under a royal charter granted by King John in 1199, Preston’s great annual j>ot fair opened a few weeks ago for eight days. It is one of the largest as well as the oldest fairs of its kind in England, and it is visited every year by purchasers from as far north as Carlisle and as far east as Leeds.'

A one-eyed lish with apparently normal vision has been produced in the experimental laboratories of the University of Chicago. In the experiment the eyes of the fish were removed and one was transplanted into the forehead. The specialists engaged in these experiments are searching for a cure for blindness. Two polished steel poles have been fixed at Rotherham Hospital to provide a fire-escape for the sisters and nurses from their quarters on the first floor of the building. The poles, which are about 12ft. long and 4in. thick, stand in a grass plot. Special doorways in the building lead to the tops of the poles.

There was an extraordinary scene lately at the Belfast Assembly Hall, when an evangelist named Nicholson called on men not to make “chimneys of themselves,” and invited them to throw away their pipes and tobacco. Men came forward and placed pipes, cigars, cigarettes, cigarette cases, and patent lighters on a table before the platform.

It is estimated that the motor cars, lorries, and cycles registered in New South Wales at June 30 last were worth £27,808,550, taking the average of the cars at £3OO each, the lorries at £350, and the cycles at £75. Police traffic returns show that in four years the number of ears registered in the State has increased three-fold, that there are to-day in use in the State four times the number of lorries used in 1921, and twice the number of motor cycles over the same period.

To be imprisoned nearly all morning in a sump full of waste water which was over her head in depth, was the experience of a married woman resident of East Ashburton (states an exchange). She had reason to walk across the wooden top of the well in her passage through the garden, where the structure, which was almost gave way and she fell through. During the course of her struggle to keep above water she sank to the bottom twice. When returning home to lunch her husband was attracted by a sound coming from the sump, and he was just in time to save his wife, who was rescued in an exhausted condition.