NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3964, 4 July 1929, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Every day 35 tons of flowers are sent from the S'eilly Isles. The Westminster Abbey flock has no minute-hand,.and tells the hours only An old railway station Berlin has been converted into a music-hall to seat 3000 people. r A ,well-known Paris firm of wine melrchants is offering', claret at £4 a. bottle. By collecting tinfoil students and staff (have raised £SOO for a cot in Newcastle Infirmary. Nearly £BO was collected in fines for books overdue at Ealing public libraries in a month. It is said that tourists in Italy are worth about 30 million pounds a year to the country. The late .Mr. Ogden Mills of New York, has left £200,000 to charitable and educational works. The preparations for next years census of the United States ate costing about £8,000,000. Polar beras at the London Zoo refused to wash during the coldest of the cold weather last nun ter. Two families of distressed miners are to he trained in bulb and flowojr-growing in the Sc illy Isles. From £6OO to £3OOO a year rent will be charged for luxury flats being built, in the West End of London. Over SOOO umbrellas and 6000 pairs of gloves were left an trains on the 'Southern Railway, in England., last year. A gold watch and chain stolen thirty years ago have been found in a. hollow tree at Chippenham, in Wiltshire. The 'Rev. ‘Frederick Gates, who lias died in Alrizona at 75, gave away phoney for Mr. Roekfeller for over 40 years. Bolshevik figures show that there are millions more ilUte|rates in Russia between 15 and 35 to-day than three years ago. London’s oldest hospital is St. Bartholomew's, which was founded in 1123; it has accomodation for some 680 patients. The Heights of Abraham at Matlock are to he'illuminated with electric lights which will be seen twcn - ■ ty miles away. A new model rocket sleigh, charged with 18 rockets, which explode •at intervals of one and a-half seconds, has been tested on the frozen Starnberg Lake, in Bavaria. The constructor, the engineer, Herr Max Valier, says that an average speed of 235 miles an hour was attained, which, lie said, far exceeded his expectations. ■Electricity has been introduced in tof the 160-year-old reservaton of the Passamapuoddy Indians on the St. Croix River, Maine, United Slates. When the electric lights were first turned on it was an event of much importance to the Indians, but many families of the village wiili continue with tallow candles, or no lights, in their homes. Death duties amounting to nearly £1,000,000 will fall to the British Treasury as a result of the death .of live fourth Eajrl of Durham, only a few months after the death of his twin brother, the third earl. As the two deaths occured within twelve months, only 50 per cent, of the usual duties will be paid in the ease of the third death. The marriage of a grandson to his grandmother is reported from Zwolle, Holland. In second marriage a man married a girl of twenty whose mother was forty-five. By his first marriage this m'nn had a son, and this son fell in love with and married the mother of his father’s second wife. The son thus not only becomes the husband of his step-grandmother, but also stepfather to his own father.