NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3014, 23 March 1926, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

One inch of rain equals 101 tons to the acre.

The weight of the human heart is from Boz. to 12oz.

Switzerland now has over 16,000 radio receiving sets. An alligator takes sixty years to become fully grown. Nine peerages became extinct in 1025, while live new ones were created.

The average number of hairs on an adult’s head is from 129,000 to 150,000. The moon’s speed in its orbit is 2288 miles an hour, or 3357 ft. a second.

Lions and tigers are 100 weak in lung power to run more than half a mile.

About £25,000,000 worth of Am-' erican films were imported into Brilais last year. There are about 520 muscles that have to do with the moving of the humaii body. The population of London has increased from 7,300,000 to 7,600,000 in fourteen years. Norfolk has more churches in proportion to its population than any other English county. Sweet food and drink are tasted with the tip of the tongue; bitter things with the back. More than 10,000,000. Bibles were issued by the British and Foreign Bible Society last year. Inmates of British Poor Law Institutes cost on an average £65 10s annually to maintain. The Great Western Railway passes through nineteen English counties and eight Welsh ones. According to official figures recently published, there tire 877,298 married women in London.

A new portable camera will delect hidden treasure or smuggled goods in brick walls or inside trunks.

At one railway station in Hull 552 metal discs were found in automatic machines in a single month.

Soap was made by the Gauls over 2000 years ago. They made it of goat’s fat and the ashes of beech trees.

The Sahara Desert is 3100 miles long and 600 miles wide. It covers an area equal to two-thirds of Europe.

Shakespeare had a vocabulary of about 15,000 words. The average man gets along with three or four thousand.

Mr. Joseph Malms, the founder of the Order of Good Templars, has died after a long and zealous life of 82 years. Ten thousand of the threads spun by a full-grown spider would not be equal in substance to one hair in a man’s head.

The largest bell in the world is the Great Bell of Moscow. It is 19ft. high, 60ft. around the rim, and weighs 198 tons. A letter, the envelope of which was one inch square, was posted at Willesden and received two days later at Hampstead. British racehorses to the number of about 4450 have been exported to all parts of the world, from Britain, since 1921.

What is perhaps the largest book in the world was recently exhibited in New York. Its pages are 10ft. long and 7ft. wide.

Canaries to the estimated number of more than one million were exported from Norwich last year to all parts of the world. A charge of a penny is now being made for admission to Kew Gardens on all days except students’ days, when the charge is sixpence. A drug discovered in 1915 in Germany ,is now thought to have valuable life-saving properties through its power of stimulating breathing. It has been estimated that the earth can maintain a population of 6,000,000,000 — a total which will be reached about 2100, at the present rate of increase..

Waterproof yiatehcs are now being made, their heads composed of rubber latex mixed with explosive material, the whole being afterwards vulcanised.

So powerful is the jaw of the swordfish that it has been known, in attacking vessels, to pierce through copper sheeting and oak planks to a depth of ten inches. The expression “Great Scott” as an exclamation of surprise is said to be derived from an American, General Winfield Scott, a Presidential candidate.

Lake Superior, in North is the largest fresh-water lake in the world. It is situated 600 ft. above sea-level, and covers an area of 31,200 square miles. Mrs Frederick Evelyn Cook, who died some months ago, is said to have left the longest will on record. It consisted of 1060 probate folios of ninety words each. As an experiment, a British Columbia beekeeper lias shipped his bees to Australia while it is winter in Canada, so that they may produce all the year round. Lost for over a year, a watch has been found in some straw in a Lincolnshire pigsty. Except for a broken glass it was undamaged, and ticked away after being wound up. Slot gas-meters are used in at least one northern city (England) as savings banks. The users insert sixpences, shillings, and even halfcrowns, leaving the money there till it is required. _ According to Dr. Edmund J. Spriggs there arc 106 calories in a pound of tomatoes as against 116 in onions, 298 in bananas, 624 in eggs, 1200 in bread, and 1620 in fat beef.

Part of the wall of a Chinese rug factory had to be taken down before an immense rug that had been woven there could be removed. It covers 920 square feet of tloor space.

The word charwomen is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word cerr, a turn, later spelled elier, and then chare, and the meaning of charwoman is a woman who does a turn of work.

A shadowless light is produced by a lamp invented by a French firm. The lamp is fitted in the centre of an inverted sheet metal bowl, round the inside of which silvered rellectors are set at a certain angle. When the electrical industry was twenty years old, there was approximately a gross investment of about £100,000,000. The radio industry, a part of the electrical family, is but four years old and has a gross investment of close on £160,000,000. Lessons in Hying for schoolboys may become a regular item of the curriculum of big British schools, if a suggestion before the AirMinistry is adopted. Asked by a Tottenham magistrate if he suggested that the police were liars, a man replied: “Oh, no! Their evidence is just terminological inexactitudes.” School accommodation in Glasgow is said to be so far below requirement that, in one instance, the children queued up half an hour befor time in order to secure a seat.

As nobody has been placed on probation in Linslaid, Buckinghamshire, for 12 months, the probation officer, who is paid only when there are cases, loses a year’s salary.

Until his retirement a year ago, Col. J. G. Williams, who died at Lincoln recently, was the oldest practising solicitor in England. He had been in practice 64 years.