NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3034, 11 May 1926, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Fainting when trying to move food which had lodged in his throat, William Parker, of Glasgow, fell against a window and cut his head, which had to receive 16 stitches in hospital. A new tenement in New York City has the first baby carriage garage. It is made of galvanised iron, is fireproof, and has a separate compartment with door and lock for each perambulator. French railway fares have been increased by 7-1 per cent, first class, It) per cent, second class, and 15 per cent, third class. The rates are now 100 per cent, more than prewar fares. London’s longest thoroughfare is Harrow Road, which is over three miles in length, while the shortest street, only 44ft. long, is Shorter Street, in the neighbourhood of the Tower Bridge. For the annual staff hall at Smedley’s Hydro, Matlock, 350 guests and members of the staff changed places for a few hours. Many people had their first experience of domestic service. Men of the Birmingham Fire Brigade rescued from a fire which broke out in a caterer’s van a pudding and ices which were being takto the central fire station for the brigade’s New Year dinner. Mapping the heavens has taken thirty years, but the work is now practically completed. It has been an international task, the British section being done by Greenwich Observatory and the Cape Observatories. Owing to the depredations of foxes a society for their destruction has been formed in the Tideswell district in Derbyshire, and a sum of £2 is paid for every, fullgrown fox shot in the locality. Mi’. William Harby, who has died at Pickworth, Lincolnshire, aged 95, had 00 descendants, two being great-great-grand-children. Two of his six children who survive him are more than 70 years old. An ingenious machine used on the London and North-eastern Railway, records on paper oscillations any jolts left during highspeed travelling. It thus reveals ancl locates defects on the track which are not visible. As big as a small lemon, the shell of the Babassu nut, found in South America is so tough that special machinery is needed to crack it. Attempts may be made to grow these nuts ih tne Royal Botanical Gardens, London. Traffic was held up in one of the main streets of Canterbury, England, recently, while crowds watched the rescue, by means of a fire escape, of a white Persian cat from a tall elm tree, where she had taken shelter from the gale for four days.