NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3846, 18 September 1928, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

A baby’s shoes and socks worth 5/- were taxed 5/C by the Irish Customs. Dr. Clapham, of Wimbledon, who lately died, rode a bicycle until he was *B7. ’ A cargo of ten million oranges recently reached London from South Africa. A swarm of bees which left a Surrey cottage twelve months previously has returned to the hive. A hen exhibited at a Southend poultry show laid two eggs while being judged. London busmen were permitted to wear open-necked shirts during the heat-wave. While fishermen of Ascension were trying to land a 14ft. shark, five other sharks came and ate it. The Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen paid 10,000 visits to fishing vessels at British ports last year. After over half a century as a master at Dulwich College, Mr. T. G. Treadgold is retiring this term. People waiting for trains at Chelsfield, in Kept, recently gathered strawberries on the railway' embankment. A swallow 1 flying across a cricket pitch at Linton Park, near Maidstone, was hit by a ball from a bowler and killed, i '

Nearly £50,000 has been collected for the hospital at Canterbury, England, in penny boxes during the last eight yeai;s. At St. Dunstan’s annual regatta at Putney, Captain lan Fraser, the blind M.P., won the finals in the single sculls. Over 140,000 Americans went to Britain last year, over 50,000 French, about 40,000 Germans, and over 30,000 Dutch.

By giving £SOOO, Mr. Bernhard Baron has added 15,000 trees to the Balfour Forest, which is being planted in Palestine. Overseas readers of Louisa Alcott’s stories have endowed a bed at the London Free Hospital to be called the Little Wjomen Cot. A million tons of coal are used every 7 year by 7 the Gas Light and ■Coke Company 7, which has provided London with gas for over a century.

Swarms of locusts 21 miles in extent lately appeared at Fraserburg, in South Africa, .and threatened destruction to the crops of wheat and pears.

Strong opposition has been aroused by the proposal to replace the graceful suspension bridge over the Thames at Marlow by a concrete structure.

New York is to spend £200,000,000 in the next five years on bridges, tunnels, and other improvements linking up various parts of the city and its environs. Sir Alexander Grant, who started with a biscuit firm in Edinburgh as a poor boy, has just given his second £IOO,OOO to the National Library Scotland. Old armour, now regarded as a treasure, was formerly thought so little of that the specimens in the Tower of London were lent for use in the Lord Mayor’s Show, while some were even sold as old iron.

The male angler fish attaches himself by so firm a bite to his mate that in time he becomes permanently attached. One female fish caught measured 3ft 6in. in length, while her mate was only 4in. long. A new device to thwart wouldbe motorcar thieves consists of a movable number plate which can be locked in a vertical position by its owner when the car is at rest. Any unauthorised driving of the car is thus detected.

Among the arms, munitions, etc., which Germany has either handed over to the Allies or destroyed are 14,000 aeroplanes, 315 submarines, 83 torpedo-boats, 6,000,000 rifles and small arms, and 107,000 ma-chine-guns. Capable of firing 35 rounds a minute, a new self-loading rifle, which recently won a prize of £3OOO offered'for the best rifle submitted in competition for the use of the British Army, has been approved by the Government.

The temperature inside various types of hats was tested on a recent hot day. In England the highest recorded was the black silk hat, 103 degrees; next came a lady’s blue felt cloche and a ventilated black bowler, both 98 degrees. ° Miss Nancy Meek:, an English girl, who last year won a whistdrive prize of a bridal outfit, is unable to claim the prize,, as she has not fulfilled the condition of getting married within a year. A gold watch has been substituted for the outfit.

More cobwebs than a spider could spin in a week are produced in an instant by a “mechanical spider” used at a Los Angeles film studio. A jet of liquid rubber spurts from the device and solidifies as a tiny fan blows it into a million strands.

Adjudged the best school boy orator in Britain, an eighteen-year-old pupil of a Bournemouth secondary schoo] has been granted a free trip to America, so that he, can enter into competition with boys selected from schools in the United States.

About the middle of July Britain was expecting to be entertaining some 50,000 visitors from America, according to estimates of the travel agencies. This is the “peak” of the tourist season, the total estimate for the period of March to September being 250,000.

Some hours after a pedlar and his wife had been murdered and robbed on the roadside near Soldin, in Brandenburg, and all traces of the crime had been removed, a farmer drove up. On reaching the spot his horse stopped suddenly, whinned, and then dropped dead.

Seven working men and two women students of Ruskin College, Oxford, have gained the Oxford University Diploma in Economics and Political Science. Among them are a Durham miner, a post office employee, an engine fitter, two clerks, a chocolate worker, and a steel worker.

Making wattle hurdles, not long ago regarded as a dying industry, in Britain, is having a remarkable revival, as the hurdles are being put to a number of new uses, such as making summer-houses, sheeppens, and fencing, as well as windshields for gardens and poultryruns.

Complete with tunnels, levelcrossing gates, a station, and signalling system, a model railway laid down in the grounds of Littleton Park, near Shepperton, has a circular track half a mile in length. The engine will pull a' train of nine carriages, with 20 passengers, at 25 miles an hour.