NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3023, 15 April 1926, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Still actively, engaged on his work as a tailor, Mr, W. M. Groundwater, of Salford, is ninetyseven years of age. There are now more than eight thousand war memorials altogether in Great Britain and on the battlefields.

Cloth entirely produced in Sussex, from the sheep’s back to the woven and dyed material, was recently exhibited in London. Two pillar-boxes in the City of London have been fitted with illuminated signs, directing passers-by to the nearest post-office. Of the members of Parliament, England, elected last autumn nearly 100 have still to make their maiden speech in the House of Commons.

America has now twelve million motor-cars, nine million gramophones, and between two and three million wireless sets.

Royal wills are never made public in Britain. They are kept in a special room of Somerset House, and not even the officials see them. Portraits carried out in colourde wax, once popular, are now returning to favour. The wax used is of a specially hard kind, to prevent it melting. Christmas cards, carrying seasonable greetings embossed in Braille type, were obtainable in England, last Christmas, for sendingjo blind people. Old cinematograph films, after being boiled down and having certain proportion of silver removed, arc used for making patent leather. Eyebrows must not be over onesixteenth of an inch, to be really “smart.” The surplus hairs are removed with tweezers, a painful and tedious process.

School teachers under the Glamorgan County Council, will have to be able to teach Welsh by 1927; English will, of course, continue to be taught. Farthings, collected over a period of eighteen years, have largely paid for the building of a church, mission-room, and vicarage in Cricklewood, London.

“Apple wine,” made from small j'ruit otherwise unsaleable, is now being made as an experiment at the National Fruit and Cider Institute, in Somerset.

The wearing of a gut violin -firing around the body for lumbago is an old-fashioned remedy that has revived in popularity in England of late.

An aluminous cement now being used for making London streets sets hard within two hours of being laid, and has been nicknamed lightning cement. In export trade, the United States of America now leads Britain; in total trade, including both exports and imports, Britain is still at the top of the list.

Four blind shorthand-typists employed by the London County Council have proved sufficiently satisfactory, for their engagements have been continued.

The broken champagne bottle which was used at the christening of H.M.S. Victoria, 1887, was presented to Lord Jellicoe on his recent visit to Newcastle. The Thatcham (Berks) farmer, who purchased a cow at a cattle sale found that the animal had wandered back to its old home twelve miles away, arriving at milking time.

Sandringham, the Norfolk residence of the late Queen Alexandra, was bought by King Edward for .6200,000 in the first place; but the estate has been greatly enlarged since. Studying the dance scenes in films is frequently the only teacher available in London’s poorer suburbs, yet the standard of dancing in these neighbourhoods is remarkably high.

Gramaphones driven by electric ity, a wireless receiver, and a collapsible writing-table are to be tit ted in a motor-car now being eon structcd in London, for a wellknown composer of music.

Jack Cowley, of Exeter, climbed a tree, eighty feel high and rescued a cat which had remained for three days apparently unable to descend. Three other cliihbers failed in the attempt.

Beer is the most popular drink according to the results of a ballot in connection with the recent Wine, Spirit, and Allied Trades Exhibition in London. Whisky comes second and port third. Children under twelve years of age, have been refused permission to take part in a broadcast concert in Birmingham. The local education authorities will permit children between twelve and fourteen to perform up till 9.15 p.m. Electricity is better than steam for short railway journeys, according to one authority. On a ten-mile stretch of line, with a station slop every two miles, thirty-five electric trains could be run in an hour against about fifteen of the steam

variety. Hundreds of men in South Wales in receipt of the dole find healthy exercise in following various packs of hounds in the mining area. These crowds from the industrial districts cause great annoyance to farmers by breaking down fences and doing other wilful damage. Two packages found by an attendant on the floor of an hotel in London proved to contain 200 counterfeit florins and half-crowns. It is thought that a coiner, visiting the hotel and finding detectives waiting there —for quite another purpose —dropped his packages and fled.

Sixteen potatoes which weighed two pounds have produced a crop sealing 1271 b. and numbering 586.

Bar gold weighing 21 tons and worth a fortune was ’thrown into a ditch at Bexley Lane, Sidcup, when the motor-lorry conveying it from London to Gravesend ran off the road. Policemen and detectives guarded the gold until another mo-tor-lorry was procured.

Gbogbo, King of the Mendi, a West African tribe, is employed as a labourer by the Sunderland Corporation under his adopted name of Robert Taylor. He is a keen Salvation Army worker and preacher, and would rather go back to his people as a missionay than to rule them.