NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3777, 10 April 1928, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The Tower of Pisa leans 16J feet out of the perpendicular.

London spends more than £12,500,000 annually on education. Glow-worms are more brilliant just before an approaching storm than at any other time. The Suez Canal is 103 miles in length. Its average depth is 36ft. and its greatest width 350 ft. [Fuel oil weighing 5,000 tons is burned on the Aquitania in one trip across the Atlantic. Domestic fires are claimed to be responsible for depositing 3,000,000 tons of solid matter on the soil of Britain every year. Mars rotates on its axis in 24 hours 37 minutes 22 seconds, so that its day is only slightly longer than that of the earth. American shopkeepers advertised their Christmas presents for men as “English aristocratic” and for women as “French chic.” Greyhound racing companies to the number of 131 were registered in Britain last year, one having a capital of £1,000,000. Of the. 72 fatal accidents in Manchester streets last year, more than 50 per cent, were directly due to carelessness on the part of pedestrians.

Gmail square islands with elec-trically-heated metal footplates for traffilc policemen to stand on in cold weather, have been installed in Riga. Tottenham, London, schoolchildren received 2,213 swimming certificates last year. Of these 1,301 or more than half, were secured by girls. Wlith a total capital of £1,716,915 no fewer than 115 companies to promote dog-racing had been registered in England at the beginning of this year. An eight-year-old Holstein cow at a farm near Peterboro, Ontario, has established a record by producing 19,'6691b. of milk and 8191 b. of butter-fat in 305 days.

A pedestrian of Southampton has attached to his walking-stick a noisy motor car horn which he sounds when about to cross a street to inform drivers of his rights. Of the ten million homes in Britain, seven millions are situated in areas supplied with electricity, but only one and a-half million houses are wired for the purpose. 1 Madagascar’s surplus crocodiles are to be skinned for bookbinding and shoe leather. Their fat is to be used in the treatment of rheumatism and other diseases. The, first “Babel” newspaper has appeared in Paris. It is called ‘L’ Arlequin,” and the first issue contained articles in German, Spanish, Italian, English and French. The Polytechnic Institute of Zurich has a clock which does not need winding. Its power is provided by .mechanism set in motion by every change of two degrees in temperature.