MULTUM IN PARVO.
t — Berlin's population is decreasing. — Florins, were first mode in Florence. —In 1858 the first Atlantic cable was laid.
— The first ballcon ascen' was made in 1783.
— There are 77,633,084 acre in the British Isles. " — A balloon's life ie about 8i flights. — England's first Sunday newspaper appeared in 1780. — The Viceroy of India receives a salary of over £16.000. — The London County Council attains its majority this year. — Jersey's early potato crop bring in about £250,000 yearly. — The rateable valu© of England and .Wales exceeds 21? million, pounds. — European porcelain was first manufactured in Dresden about 1708French, death duties arr graded trom 1 to 20£'por cent" — The world's record high jump for a horse is 7ft Sin. —At Freiburg, Germany, is a rose-bush bearing 10,000 buds. — About 100 years ago the Income Tax ■wae 2s in the £. -' — , Western Canada last year produced 100,000,000 .-bushels of wheat. ' —It has~been estimated that there are 20,000 tons of radium in the sea. — Snails boiled in barley water wore popular onoe as a cure for a cough. — During 10 years France will spend £120,000,000 on naval construction. ' — Britain possesses over £31,000,000 worth of (Shares in the Suez Canal. . — Great Britain has spent £95.000,000 m naval construction '"n nine years. —By nibbling matches, mice recently caused a seriouS fire in a post office- — Over 14,000 children are educated in Poor Law Schools in England and Wales. —At a rattle sale in the Coventry district recently several sheep realised only Is each. — Twenty troy pounds of standard gold ore coined into 934 sovereigns and one halfeovereign. — No peer can -take his seat in the Mouse of Lords if he be under ag«, of unsound mind, or bankrupt Fifty thousand tons of «oot are taken from London chimneys ir a y-ear. — Nearly 200 million people m India are dependent on agriculture for their living. —In Wood Green there is living a woman of 105 years of age who can read without glasses. — Neptune takes over 160 years to make one complete revolution round the 6un. During the first three months of this year 118 aliens have been expelled from Britain. .. — W«gt Australia contains nearly a million equare miles, and less than 300,000 people. — Nearly 316,000 marriages took place in France laefc year. — Last year 2998 alien criminals were received into British prisons. , — There are 500,000 horses m Great Britain available for purposes of war —Of every thousand people bom, less than half reach the age of 50. — In the last 30 years tho trade of Great Britain has nearly doubled itself. ' — Blue, pink, and aquamarine diamonds were recently exhibited in London. —In certain parrs- of Germany it is regarded as a death warning to hear a Cr i£^ea T jy 10,000 beds In London hospitals ar© daily occupied by che eick and maimed ■"^ln the West Indies a large caterpillar found on the palm tree is regarded as a great table . luxury. _ Of all European countries, only Hoi land has a lower rate of 'nfant mortality than Great Britain. — Sixteen shillings had recently to 'be paid by an aeronaut for damaging telephone wires with his balloon. — When telegraphs were first employed the speed of transmission was only foui -o five words a minute — Gold can be beaten k> thin that it •would take 252,000 gold leaves to produce the thickness oE a single inch. — Over 30001b of rose petals are used in the manufacture of lib of otco of roses perfume. , . , — The pari-mutuel in France has received "35160,000,000 ir bets or horse races during tb !N£t2gC'h« distibruted £125,000 from the profits of the municipal trams in •he last 11 years towards the relief of the — ;It is estimated, that a million pounds eterlino- has bsen realised in the last 25 yeans by the ?ab of postage stamps at public auction. — The first Hague Peace Conference was Jwltf at tho Ha?ue in 1899, at the instigation of the Tsar of Russia. — Cliinesr: make practically no use of pins or buttons, strings, knots, and 'oops being utilised in their place. —At an open-air performance of classical plays near Lucerne recently the prompter's box was a large chestnut tree. — It haa been estimated that it took the stream from which the Niagara Falls originate no lets than 35,000 years to hollow out the first three miles of ite gorge.
— Newcastle has started a P.Y.O. Club. The letters stand for "Pay Your Own," and the object of the club is to restrain its members from "standing" drinks. — Belonging to a farmer near Bishop Stortford ie a dog whioh travels two mile^ across country every morning to fetch his master's newspaper, which is thrown io him from a train by the guard. — In 1900 there were less than 5000 motor ■vehicles in the whole of the Briti=h I*>!eo. There aw> now over 40.000 in the London district alone.
— The Koh-i-noor diamond originally weighed nearly 300 carats, but by eucce*eive cutting*, has been reduced to 106 •carats
— The monks of a monastery near Ghent have in their leisure time decorat?<l the walls with gorgeous larxfccapc-s, glowing with colour, and full of life, 'ormed entirely by mean's of the postage stamps af all the nations of the world. Palaces, forests, streams, and mountains are represented, butterflies flutter in the air, bir<ls of beautiful plumage perch on branches snakes and lizards glide about, and innumerable animals find places here .-iiul They. The pictures are most artistic, in tho ef\J<> of Chinese landscape gardening, and already between 9,000.000 and 10,0Q0 ; Q0O stamps hare been used.
— The British Museum possesses a chair — the -throne of Queen Hafcasu — which was in use some 3500 years ago.
— The record for the longest and quickest non-stop run in England is held by the Great Western railway with the Padding-ton-Plymouth express, which travels 225| miles at an average spaed of 54.1 miles an hour.
— London used to posses, the cheapest journal ever published. It wa ailed the "Six-a Penny ; or, Penny-a-Week Town and Country Daily Newspaper," and' subscribers of one penny weekiy had the paper delivered to them every day, while single copies were sold at a 'arthing.
— The extremities to which men will resort in their efforts co justify smoking arv little less than pathetic. The prinoipal of a certair college, where smoking- was strictly tabooed, once surprised a whole roomful of undergraduates regaling themselves with the forbidden weed. In despair of harsher measures, he thought h© would try moral suasion. So he put the question to each one: "Why do you smoke V" The excusee were highlj interesting. One emoked to cure headache, another -had weak digestion, a third to calm his nerves. The lasfc young man to be questioned was a hale, hearty fellow who could not with any colour of truth plead conventional excuses, aod who was not ji adept in polite lying; but he had to give some reason ; so he finally blurted out that he smoked for— oorns. The absurdity of the situation appealed to the young men far more powerfully than a dpatia. sermons would have done.— Good Health.
— It is not generally known that the remains of the great violinist Paganini wero left "coffined but unburied for many yeare after his death. The Roman Catholic clergy of Nice denied him Christian sepulture," because lie refused to receive the sacrament in his last moments. His- nephew and heir applied to the ecclesiastical court for ar order to proceed witb the burial, but, after a long delay, his appsal was rejected. After a judgment from the court at Genoa that the interment should take place in the oometery the priests appealed to another jurisdiction, and until the affair was finally settled the body of the ' maestro " was left in a garden ! — The singular way in which coffee and newspapers are linked together is worth bearing in mind. In 1696 Edward Lloyd, of Tower street, London, coffee shopkeeper, started hie Lloyd's News, a shipping and commercial chronicle. It appeared thrice a week, was of two pages (one leaf), and contained 10£ in by s£in of letterpress. About the 6ame time, or soon after. Edward Lloyd, of Cork Hill. Dublin, jeoifee shopkeeper, began his Lloyd's Newsletter. This was not a case of the early newspaper magnate ; they were two separate persons unknown to each other, and Lloyd's coffee house in Dublin was no less celebrated than -the famous London one which has developed into the great Al of the Royal Exchange.
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Otago Witness, Issue 2892, 18 August 1909, Page 67
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1,407MULTUM IN PARVO. Otago Witness, Issue 2892, 18 August 1909, Page 67
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