News Items

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4393, 1 April 1909, Page 1

News Items

♦ The Pope’s annual income is | said to be £480,000. One couple in 1000 live to f celebrate tbeir golden wedding. Camels can carry a load three times as heavy as can horses. New York has more re-ji staurants than any other city in the world. Leaves of the Asiatic star-tree emit at night a clear phos* i| phorescent light. A ball-dress worn recently in •! Bermuda was covered with 30,000 postage-stamps. St. Peter’s, Rome, can acco- i modate 54,000 worshippers, and | St. Paul’s London, 32,000. • The most rapidly-flowing river is the Sutlej in India, ‘ \ which has a decent of 12,000 feet in 180 miles. The beggar chief of Sooehow, who is king of the Chinese beggars, has an income mated at £3,000 aunualLy. London’s ashbin refuse is compressed, reduced to a material r esembling garden mould, and then sold as a fer- ;• tiliser.

Professor Charles Waldstein told an audience at the London Society of Arts recently that Egyptian women were false hair in the year 5000 B.C.

Sponges are marine animals that breed in spring. The young sponges swim about for some time, but finally become fixed to rocks.

A newspaper or sheet of paper tied on a window or balcony of a dwelling- house in Mexico indicates that there are rooms to let in the house.

For centuries Denmark’s kiugs have all beeu named Christian or Frederick. It is the law that Christian must be succeeded by Frederick, and vice versa.

As shown by the camera, a flash of lightning is made up of innumerable small flashes, each one following the other by an almost imperceptible period of time.

A bidder at a Japauese auc - tion writes his name and bid on a piece of paper, which he puts into a box. This is ..i >-m *d by the auctioneer, an--. •• ughest bidder receive in g.. as, India has perhaps a greater variety of plants than any other country in the world, having 15,000 native species, while the flora of the entire continent of Europe embraces about 10,000.

In some of the cantons of / '| Switzerland all the dead, rich and poor alike, are buried at . . the expense of the public. Go- - vernment undertakers furnish, \ everything gratuitously the ■ ■ coffin, the vehicles, the grave, —’*• etc.