NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3582, 4 January 1927, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

Garden and other produce of an estimated weight of nearly one million tons is dealt with annually at Covent Garden, London’s famous market.

Excluding tramcar and trade licences, there were 1,090,000 mot.or vehicles licensed in Britain on August 31. This included 99,000 motor-eabs.

A man whose job is to give an occasional “wash and brush-up” to Nelson’s column, says that last timejie made the ascent he found a full hundred dead pigeons on the wide ledge at the top of the column.

In a Paris ballroom the musicians must keep their eyes on a big dial like a clock face, which beats • the time and indicates how many beats aro allowed to the minute. Its speed is controlled by the orchestra leader.

Only twelve feet long, the railway station at Blackwell Mill, in Derbyshire, is claimed to be the smallest in England. There is only one train a week, for the use of railway servants and their families, who pay no fares.

A giant arum, a native of Sumatra, has been flowering in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The flower was over 3ft. in diameter. The plant had a tuber about 3ft. in diameter and it produces a leaf one year and flower the next. Corduroy has an exalted origin. The first material of the kind was corded from silk and manufacturd exclusively for kings of France, who wore it chiefly while hunting. From that fact, it derived its name of “Cord du roy.”

While in New York, 12 burglars in 13 escape undetected, in London only one in ten escapes. That is to say, that out of 130 burglars only 10 are caught in New York, while in London 117 are caught. The authority for these figures is a former New York detective.

The Crown Prince of Denmark confesses that had he chosen a career for himself, he would certainly have selected that of an officer in the British Navy, in which he served as a midshipman. He had an intense love for the sea and everything connected with it.

Numerous kinds of leprosy curing trees exist in Brazil, including one species which is thought to be more efficacious than the famous chaulmoogra tree of Hawaii. The seed is called “leper fruit,” or “leper bread,” indicating that the natives believe that it cures the disease.

It is claimed that a new soundabsorbing plaster will revolutionise hospital construction, one drawback of which has been noise. This plaster absorbs from eight to ten times as much sound as ordinary plaster. It is reported to be excellent for smothering high-pitched tones, even the wailing of infants.

At an inquest on a publican at Devonport, England, it was stated that a bullet, after penetrating the dead man’s heart, passed through the bed on which lie was lying, penetrated the floor and pierced the ceiling of the public-bar below. It there struck a barrel and glanced off into the pocket of a customer, where it remained unnoticed for 20 minutes.

The Montag Morgen newspaper states that the secret of Germany’s “Big Berthas,” which were destroyed before they could fall into the hands of the Allies after the Armistice, was revealed to the United States by two- Germans now under arrest on a charge of high treason. The prisoners are Doctor Goldmann, school teacher, and Doctor Dietz, who were taken into custody last September on the ground of having revealed military secrets to a foreign Power. It appears that Goldmann offered to sell the American Embassy in Berlin an artillery invention on the ground that he was “convinced that America would stand at Germany’s side in anv future war.” The invention would have made it possible to construct “Big Berthas.” It is not stated whether the American Government purchased the invention.