NEWS AND NOTES

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3532, 2 September 1926, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES

The ordinary person’s lungs eonlain 76,000,000 air 'cells. The population of the earth doubles itself in 250 years. Goggles have been devised to protect the eyes when peeling onions. One pound of good coal has sufficient energy to lift a man 14 miles high. During the last 108 years the British Parliament has had only ten Speakers. One-sixth of the people in Great Britain live within 15 miles of Charing Cross. Cases of twins occur, according to an English calculation, once in every 69 births. Holland has a river called Y. In China there is a city called U, and in Sweden a, town called A. Soap was made by the Gauls over 2,000 years ago. They made it of goat’s fat and the ashes of beech trees. London originally stood in the •centre of marshes, part .of which extended over the area of Southwark and Battersea.' Arranged in a straight line, the railways of the world would reach to the moon and back again—477,636 miles. *' The bell of Big Ben at Westminster, weighs 14 tons; the bell of St. Paul’s Cathedral clock has a weight of five tons. Miss Mary Maskelyne, granddaughter of the founder of the famous house of magic of that name, has decided to be a conjurer. A new mechanical pencil has appeared. It has leads of five colours, any one of which can be used by turning an indicator on the handle. There are 52 canals in the United States, having a total length of 4,468 miles. China alone excels that country in its canal mileage. In West Milcsey, Surrey, lives Mr Alfred Lock, aged 91. One hundred and ten of his descendants live and work in the same village. The Amir of Afghanistan has sent £l5O for the Memorial Theatre to Shakespeare, “whose rich literature is read and loved throughout the world.”

The largest piece of mica ever discovered was taken out of a Carolina mine recently. It weighed 3,3001 b., and was valued at about £I,OOO.

A 16-foot wooden pipe, made of staves and metal hoops, has been constructed in California for bringing water down a hillside to a pow-er-house.

An oak tree, three centuries old, felled on the Wingerworth Hall estate, neai' Chesterfield, weighed lo tons, and measured 18ft. round the base. Civilisation does not tend to the horse’s longevity. In a wild state lie lives to be 36 or 40 years old, while the domestic horse is old at 25 years.

Racehorses worth a total of £IOO- - were recently transferred in one train from Devizes to Newmarket, owing to the moving, of a famous racing stable. Parks and open spaces maintained by the London County Council total 128, measuring altogether 8} square miles. The purple finch is not purple, but is a rich rosy red; while the female is streaked with grey and olive brown.

A whirlwind, described by some as a waterspout, swept inland from the sea near Urenui, on Saturday, and practically wrecked a small house in which a Maori woman was living. The woman marvellously escaped injury, being thrown into a nearby hedge by the force of the cyclone. The house was unroofed and practically torn down, the contents being scattered and broken, leaving little but (lie floor undamaged.

The simple twist of a dial or two of a receiving set far down in the depths of one of the world-famous Jenolan Caves in the Blue Mountains, and there rang out in the stilly silence of giant caverns the voice of a lady vocalist away in Brisbane. She had been broadcasted from station 4 QG. The music, after travelling 600 miles over the ether, had found its way through the great masses of rock from which Nature has fashioned these wonderful caves. This was not all. The words and the music were transmitted from the depth of the caves to one of the big broadcasting stations in the city and there re-broadcasted tor listen-ers-in all over Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.

The story of how a dairyman’s bet was lost is told by Mr A. J. Sinclair (well-known in Waikato dairying circles), in the “New Zealand Herald” (reports the “Post’s” Auckland correspondent). The writer says: “At a meeting at Waiau Pa I explained as simply as I could various channels through which dairy produce was marketed, but I made the mistake of using indiscriminately, the expressions ‘f.o.b’ and ‘c.i.f.,’ without explaining how these differed. At question time a farmer asked for enlightenment, and, upon receiving it, he replied in a crestfallen voice: ‘That explanation cost me ten shillings. I made a bet with my neighbour only this morning that ‘c.i.f.’ meant ‘cash in a fortnight.’ ” The fact that a man had shot fourteen stray dogs which had been interfering with mobs of sheep neai the abattoirs, was mentioned at the last meeting of the Cook County Council. The secretary of the Gisborne Master Butchers’ Association wrote complaining that dogs had keen 'interfering with mobs of sheep and they asked that the Council should endeavour to abate the nuisance. The matter was referred to the dog inspector. The former well-armed auxiliary

cruiser and German raider, Wolf, which spent four weeks'at an anchorage at Sunday Island in the Kermadecs, within 500 miles hf the New Zealand coast, and whose whereabouts during the latter part of the Great War caused so much anxiety in this part of the world, is to-day t a peaceful trader tramping the seas in search of cargoes. On a recent visit to Noumea (says the Lyttelton Times) the Union Company’s freighter, Waipori, rubbed sides with the Wolf, which was loading for the New Hebrides, and now Hies the tricolour of France, being 'listed in Lloyd’s Register as the Antinous. The ex-raider must not be confused with the British steamer Antinous, of 3,600 tons.