NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3613, 15 March 1927, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Wireless has been installed in Windsor workhouse. A Jewish day-school is to be opened in West Hampstead. Gorman bankruptcies in 1926 totalled 12,394, against 11,184 in 1925. Blood passes through the heart at the rate of seven miles an hour. Water boils 212 degrees above zero at sea level. Meat of the musk ox is said to taste much' like beef. The population of the earth doubles itself in about 259 years. More than 18,000 persons died from snake bites in India last year. Most of the people who live to be centenarians are light in weight. Within the British Empire there are 1,837,000 square miles of forest. In Texas, bats have been helpfwl in devouring malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The United States has a million and a-half more automobiles than telephones. i Fifty gallons of alcohol have been produced for one ton of straw in England. Among Stone Age deposits in Kenya a skull of an unknown ralie has been found. Gorillas and chimpanzees are left handed, -while the orang-outang is light-handed.. In the United States there are twice as many suicides by men as by women. A Sheffield cutlery company has constructed a penknife with 1581 blades. Bars of gold may be bought. at the Bank of England for about £I7OO each. Seventy-six bridges still in use in England were built before the year 1750. Albania has no currency of its own, using the coins of neighbouring countries. London’s daily ration of sunshine during 1926 was about 25 minutes less than normal. An Australian parrot in the London Zoo has gnawed his way out of 18 cages in three years. Wine still preserved in the cellars of a winedealer in London dates back to 1540 and 1631. . Forty families, on an average, moved into London’s new 1 suburb at Dagenham every day of 1925. More than 300 peerages of the United Kingdom are without an heir or have only an heir presumptive. Iron railings cast in Kent for St. Paul’s Cathedral more than two centuries ago are now in Toronto. Local rates, which were £71,000,000 in Britain in 1914-15, rose to exactly double this amount in 192425. The first cast-iron gun made in England was produced in 1543 at the village of Buxted, in Sussex, England. j London’s first cinema, it is believed, was opened in Bishopsgate in 1906 by a Mr. White* who died recently. Mounted police in Bradford now have small electric rear-lamps fixed on the strap at the back of thensaddles. Out of an official salary of £4500 the Bishop of Petersborough has to pay a pension of £ISOO to a previous bishop. To coal a liner the size of the Olympic takes 500 men five days; it can be refuelled with oil by 12 men in 12 hours. Babbit fur can now lie dressed and dyed until it needs an experienced eye to distinguish it from genuine grey squirrel.

' Motor-'buses such as run on the London streets now pay an annual tax of £IOB, an increase of £24 on last year’s payment. Fur seals, are among the greatest rovers in the world, animals marked in the Arctic having been found in the Antarctic. Of Britain’s male population 26 per cent, are bachelors and 34 per cent, arc married but have no dependent children. Among the vocational training courses now available to men of the Royal Navy, in certain circumstances, is that of piano tuning. An intelligent working man has a vocabulary of 5000 words, while an educated man should know from 8000 to 10,000 words. With a population of 20,000, Abbey Wood, a distrfeit in the southeast of London, has only-one policeman and no police station. In the island of Hao, a French ■possession in mid-Pncific, rats serve as mediums of exchange, and with a sufficient number a man can buy a wife. Dogitish, once, regarded as a pest, are now providing a valuable source of income for fishermen. This fish is particmlarly popular for frying. With the exception of fishing vessels, yachts, and barges, all British vessels arc required to have their names on each,bow in letters 4in. high. Measuring 703 ft. long, the largest motor-liner was recently launched. Flying the Italian {lag, its tonnage is 33,000, with a speed of 22 knots. Within 14 miles of London, the Kentish village Downe has neither gas nor electricity, no main drainage, no doctor, no cinema, and no omnibus.

March and December of last year were the driest ever known in London. November was the wettest on record, while February was the warmest since 1869.

The council of a city in India has prohibited the killing of mad dogs, on the ground that they are the same as human lunatics and must be put in asylums.

Norway has refused to alter her dlaiin to control the waters within four miles of her shores for fishing puifcoses. Tire limit claimed by other North Sea Powers is three miles. Knitted spats with fancy tops arc being worn by men in America. They are not very dissimilar from the spattees which British women have been wealing this winter. “Careers masters” are the latest suggestion for schools, to help pupils in choosing the most suitable vocations. Experiments in this direction have already met with considerable success. About 20' tons of copper amounting to about £BOOO, was collected by Glasgow students at their Charities Carnival. It included £8 10s in farthings. The students in all collected £14,300. Among the curious trades mentioned in the London Post Office Directory are dandy-roll makers, milk-guard manufacturers, couldust grinders? brewery amalgamators, and anatomists osteologists. Street accidents are becoming so much more numerous, especially in the big towns, that the hospitals find all their beds taken up with such patients, leaving no vacancies even for urgent, cases of illness. Mr. William No. 1 Harris, who lives in London, is a son of Mr. William Harris, famed as the “sausage king.” He had four sons, three of whom he named William, numbering them No. 1, No. 2, No. 3. Artificial pearls are now being manufactured from herring scales Some of these pearls are realising over £SO each, and are so well made that only experts can detect the difference between them and real pearls. For throwing away a tram ticket ns he descended from a tramear, an English visitor was fined on the. spot a sum, in Austrian money, equivalent to Is 2d by a policeman, who took the money and delivered a receipt in return.

Suit-cases used by sailors in the British Navy in place of the oldtime blue handkerchief, are the subject of a new regulation which decrees certain sizes only by January 1, 1928, and specific colour and material by January 1, 1929. For the. second time only in three years a gull has been known to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. The bird was marked with an identification ring in the Fame Islands in June, 1924, and discovered again in Labrador in the October of 1925.

Designed to rise to 1208 ft. alio'* 1 the street level, a building now being erected in New York wilt have c-ixty high-speed lifts, two of them being- express to the eighty-second floor.

The teredo, or ship worm, which does great damage to ships, piers, and wharves, has in its head small, hard shells which form a drill powerful enough to bore into the baldest woods.

One of the two last Royal Marine Crimean veterans, Thomas Pitt, has died at Portsmouth, aged 94. In the trenches at Sebastopol he saw Florence Nightingale tending the wounded.