LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 November 1941, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Child’s Death. Believed to have eaten rat poison, Barry John Dunn, aged one year and ten months, died at Thames on Saturday, a few hours after having been admitted to the hospital. Chilled Beef Championship. At the Wanganui Show on Saturday, first place in the first section of the New Zealand chilled beef championship was awarded to D. Grant, Dannevirke, who entered a Polled Angus bred by himself. An Aberdeen Angus-Short-horn cross, bred by J. Wylye and Sons, Fordell, was second, and another third. New Zealand Legation. Asked in Wellington yesterday whether any further information was available on the progress of inquiries being made in Washington for premises for the contemplated New Zealand Legation, the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, stated that suitable premises had been found and an agreement for purchase had been signed. Additions to Health Camp. Additions which have been made to the buildings at the Otaki Health Camp for children were officially opened on Saturday afternoon by the Minister for Health, Mr Nordmeyer. The keen public interest in the health camp movement was clearly indicated by the large number of people present, many of them making a special trip from Wellington to attend. The extensions have cost approximately £19,000, and will add much to the value and usefulness of the institution in catering for the needs of children from the Hawke’s Bay, Manawatu, Taranaki and Wellington districts. A Night of Terror. A violent electrical storm swept across outlying Auckland suburbs to the south and east of Auckland at about 11.30 o’clock on Saturday night, and continued at intervals for several hours. It was particularly severe in the East Tamaki district, where three Public Works Department power poles near the Pakuranga Hunt Club’s kennels were shattered or split from end to end by lightning. “The whole house kept flaring up as if it were on fire,” said an East Tamaki resident. “It was really a terrifying night. I have never heard worse thunder. One clap was so bad that the whole building shook. Throughout the storm the sky in the east was brilliantly lit up by lightning.”

Fantastic Wager Won. To win a wager of £5O, Mr W. Holmes, Timaru, stood on his left leg from one o’clock to seven o’clock on Friday morning enduring six hours of torture that few would voluntarily undertake for ten times the money. It was at a party at Mr F. W. Stevens’s home, 20 Chester Street. The host bet Mr Holmes, famous in Canterbury for his unconventional escapades, £5O to £5 that he could not stand on one leg till 7 a.m., and the wager was promptly taken up. To Mr Stevens, watching the performance, the ordeal was almost as painful, he declared, as it was to Mr Holmes. Towards the end, the latter was almost tearing his hair out with the pain of his cramped leg muscles. He was in his stockings, and his foot swelled to such a degree that, when the ordeal was over, he could not put his Ishoe on again,