From Many Lands

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1016, 5 July 1930, Page 19

From Many Lands

TABLOID READING FOR THE WEEK-END.

POTATO WARFARE WIFE'S PUGNACIOUS METHODS On one occasion Joseph Batley Miljer’3 wife threw 71b of potatoes at him, one after the other, according to a statement Miller made in a Sydney Divorce Court. His wife, he said, had told him to clear out after she had exhausted her supply of potatoes. The judge reserved his decision.

GHOSTS family terror-stricken Terror-stricken by strange cries, ■whistles, and footsteps, a family living in a village near St. Brieuc have half-demolished their house in an effort to exorcise the ghost to which they attribute the noises. The alarming sounds still continue, however, and great crowds have visited the place to listen to the "ghost.” The occupants of the house are a middle-aged woman, her father, and a girl of 13. ,“A COPPER MINE” HUGE HOARD OF PENNIES A poorly dressed man called at a Wallasey (Cheshire) bank to open an account with £2OO, but said he required assistance, and a clerk accompanied him to his home. There the man showed a heap of coppers, which on being counted totalled 45.000 coins. Sacks were obtained and filled and then a conveyance was hired to carry the hoard to the bank. SECRETS OF A MONARCH WILLIAM IV.’s MANUSCRIPT LOG The original manuscript log and journal kept by Prince William Henry, afterward King William IV., while a midshipman on H.M.S. Prince George and during his residence in New York, was sold at Sotheby’s. It consists of three carefully-writ-ten volumes containing nearly 500 pages and is of especial interest as it covers a period of the American Revolution, 1781-82, When the Prince was residing in New Y’ork. In addition to many unpublished details there is a record of the plot of Colonel Ogden, with the written approval of Washington, to abduct the Prince. STRANGE SUICIDES STORY OF A NAME Because 6he could not have her name engraved on her high school diploma as she wanted it, Roberta Roberts, a 16 year-old girl, committed suicide at the home of her parents at York, Pennsylvania. She shot herself through the head. Roberta hated her own Christian name and always wanted to be known as Bobbe. When the high school authorities refused to put this name on her diploma she became despondent. Another queer suicide is that of a oeautiful New York girl named Maria Busacca. Iu spite of dieting she started to grow stout. In one year her weight rose from 9st 41b to 16st 111 b. When she could not reduce her weight by any means she put her head in a gas oven. THE DEATH RUN DOG COLLAPSES AFTER RACE There was a startling finish to one the courses in the Barbican Cup at the South of England coursing meetmg recently. Mrs. Sofer Whitburn’s uog Wise Councillor, in his course *dth Lord Dewar’s Dodona, put up a thrilling display, and won the course t>y bringing down the hare. He got on to a fresh hare, however, and having coursed this he got a third hare, and took this to the wood. Here he got a fourth hare, and after coursing this one for some time he joined in with the dogs contesting the next course. He afterward collapsed as a result of his exertions, and died shortly afterward. AN AMAZING THEFT mystery of the night An Auditone talkie machine valued at over £2,000 mysteriously disappeared overnight from the Australian picture Theatre in Sydney, and the Criminal Investigation Department has been asked to investigate. How such a cumbersome apparatus; several tons and containing a hundred separate sections, couid have been removed without detection is a puzzle to the police. STRONG-MINDED BRIDE LATE FOR WEDDING A bride—a pretty blonde dressed in green—figured in a remarkable inciafc Covent Garden registry office recently. She had kept the bridal party waiting for three-quar-ters of au hour, and when she arrived the registrar was absent for a lew minutes. The bridegroom curtlj' asked her she was so late, and she told him that she Mas late intentionally, 88 53 he meant to begin her married life as she would continue. “Other brides in the past have been late for their marriage,” she said later to a newspaper man, ‘‘and, although I did not mean to be so late, things went wrong at my house; articles had been mislaid and I could hot find them. “I know the reason T gave my husband is true, and that he would like the truth to be known. Perhaps other brides in the past have arrived late for the same reason, but they have not cared to state it. In this candour at the outset of one’s married life can do no harm.” When the registrar returned the couple were married and it was seen that the bridegroom had no ring to Place on the finger of his bride. He explained to the registrar that she old not wish to have a wedding-ring.

ASKS FOR GAOL BOY TIRED OF FAMILY Paul Olson, 16, of Salt Lake City, requested a six months' gaol sentence recently. Olson was arrested for speeding, "is it correct that you requested the officer to send you to gaol for six months?" the judge asked Olson. “Yes,” replied the defendant; “I have no desire to drive a car, but my dad refuses to learn, so I have to act as driver for the entire family.” The judge gave him six months, suspended on the understanding that Olson should not drive a car for that time. AERIAL BATTLE Wn H DRUNKEN MAN While four other passengers, including two women, looked on in terror, Tex Andiug, of New York, the pilot, fought a drunken passenger who tried to seize the controls of an airplane Hying at a height of 3,000 feet. Anding finally knocked the drunken man unconscious. The man regained consciousness as the machine landed at tho Holes airport. Jumping to the ground, he began throwing stones at the pilot. Officials came to the pilot's assistance, and escorted the man from the airdrome. A RIDDLE OF DISTANCE SOLVED BY EUCLID Euclid’s proposition that a square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle equals the sum of the squares on the other two sides was used to solve a problem in Brighton Police Court, England. Evidence had been given that the body of a boy who had been run over by a motor-cyclist was found in the road, opposite a point four paces from a lamp-post and three paces from tho edge of the road, when a magistrate asked, "What was the distance from the lamp-post to the body?” Mr. J. C. Bosley (defending) was equal to the task. “Let X,” he said, “equal the distance from the body to tho lamp-post. Then 4 squared plus 3 squared equals X squared; 4 squared plus 3 squared equals 25; therefore X equals 5.” There was laughter when Mr. Bosley announced the result of his calculations. His figure was accepted.

“THE SILENT COP” DIRECTS PERTH TRAFFIC A new silent traffic “cop” excited Perth (Western Australia) recently. He was white-haired, with a long white moustache, aud Cor two hours directed the traffic at the corner of Colin and Wellington Streets. When a policeman asked him nis name he just stared and went on directing the traffic. At the lock-up he still maintained a stolid silence, and even when he appeared in court lie would say nothing. Just when the magistrate was wondering how to deal with the case the man's wife rushed in and identified him. She explained he was suffering from loss of memory, and his speech was affected. “Take him home and look after him,” advised the magistrate. His wife did so after paying Gd costs. A LATE START REJUVENATION WITH £IO,OOO With an inheritance of £IO,OOO Miss Lillie Wilson is going to live in New York after GO years of such restricted loneliness that she has never heard of wireless, never seen a film, and only once ridden in a motor-car. The motor-car ride, a startling event in her life, took place when she visited Middletown Hospital, in Connecticut, where her father had just died at the age of 96. Mr. Wilson had been a farmer in one of the most lonely parts of Connecticut, and had brought up liis daughter in complete ignorance of the world's progress. She had never even learned to read. Two other daughters rebelled against such rigorous treatment and left home. When their father's will was read it was found that he had left his entire fortune to Lillie, who has decided to begin the life denied her for 60 years by going to New York to live with one of her sisters. THE DIVING BALL TO DESCEND HALF A MILE A new deep-sea diving record is claimed for the famous naturalist, William Beebe, who descended 800 feet beneath the sea-surface in a steel ball with fused quartz windows. The steel ball is fitted with appara tus to absorb the exhaled air. Beebe, expects to attain a depth of half a mile with this apparatus. Mr. Beebe is hon. curator of birds of the New York Zoological Society and director of the society’s department of tropical research. He is par ticularly interested in deep-sea studies, and has published books de seribiug his adventures and discover ies. HAPPY LIFE

YET WELCOMES DEATH Leaving £lO to the Unitarian Church at Banbury for a memorial service “suitable to the manner in which my body shall dealt with,” Mr. A. D. Tyssen, a barrister, expressed the hope “that whoever conducts the service will say nothing lugubrious about death, or the lot of mankind in general, or myself in particular. “I have indeed had troubles aud disappointments, but I have found life a glorious thing. No one need mourn for me —the Kingdom of Heaven is within me.” Mr. Tyssen, who lived at West Hampstead, directed his executor “to deal with my body as she shall think fit: she may deliver it to any hospital or medical institution or medical persons to be used for research or instruction.”