Around the Globe

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 194, 14 August 1920, Page 19

Around the Globe

Serbia i 5 aalil to be Hie land of centenarians, the proportion of those over one hundred years of age being at the present time one In while in Denmark and Switzerland the average Is one In a million. It is reported from Lynns that two Important oil WP Hs hnve | ~,p n discovered In the ncUrnTtonrhnort of Honneville. Haute Savole. One or ,he t«o wells is 'situated between Mnrc,,ie r and c|,,B t . g . The other, ■nhi'h ls near Sim. is 4wO metres deep, and is estimated tn yield 20,000 gallons Tier minute. SHEPHERD BOY SCULPTOR. The sculptor iraiil Hard,.. who ls bel " n cnlled the -NVw X ~„„.. hjs ~„,„ aw , lll JJ he National iv,.e ~r ~,„ rnPls Sn , f "f- Th » ™ rk < -»!'•" ealned for. him this dlrtlnotion are "Ktoriml Sorrow" (a *«1«»> head, nnd n statue of a g| MnHe faun. Ten Tγ.., rs np , y. r )lmlp was a •hepherO boy m , UP ,-«,„.„„„ mountains . THE PEACEFUL SMOKE. Ferris Brown, l:t,-., maker at Zion City ("n the Is! of Inst month), petitioned -the State Attorney of Lake County for a permit to carry a revolver so he ran smoke unannounced. A loaded gun ls a neces«sarv adjunct to a smoker's U;t in Zlon City, he fays. Oversrer Wilbur Glenn Voliva. of the 7.10n City Chur.-h. has retained sluepers to enforce his Hntl-tohacr-o dec-reo. and two attacked him the other nicht while he Was smokinz a cigarette, Brown alleges. A THOUGEFTJL KEN. A hen which deposits a fresh breakfast ! •cc on her owner's bed and then awaUes him at the proper time to consume the J fruits of her Industry is (states the "Timber i Trades Journal") the prized possession of Ur. .1. A. .McKenzle, sawmill employee, of Oregon. Retires nt :i a.m.—the end of his working day—Mr. MeKonzle leaves open the window at his iiedside. Shortly before Boon the hen flirs in. nestles on her master's •houlder. lays her ezz. nnd rising pecks ' the sleeper cently on the forehead. RED HAIRED RACE. The possibility of red-halrea people being separate race" was mentioned nt a ineptinK of the Royal Anthropolofflcnl In- • Utute in London, when Professor F. G. Arsons ffave n lecture on "I>'stribufinn oT ! Hair and Kye Colour in the IBrkish Isles." I The average niimher of I people was. roilKhl.v. fonr In ench hundred, and It was quite an aristocratic colour. In Lon<k>u 5.1 per cent, of the upper classes had red hair, as compared with 4..T per cent in the lower classes. There was ■ n abnormal amount of red hair anions the beauties of the south-west of Ireland. "MY ASSASSINS FAILED ME." . ■With a complaint that two men he had tired 'to put an end to his life had taken i cum of money agreed upon and had then made off without killing him. a man named Henri presented himself at the police station at Nice. He explained that he wanted to commit sulfide but had not the eourajre. lie had aciordinijlj" t=oußht out two roughs in a low quarter of the town, who asrreed to till him in return for this amount, but they fuok to their heels Immediately. The police, considering the man an irresponsible. pent him away; T-bereupon, going owtslde the Tuiildh.s. he iihot himself dead in front of the police station.

EX-OFFICER'S INFATUATION. A man named Vlctorto Manzi. formerly en officer In the Italian army, "who stMes t-hnt his father is n prr>mlnpnt hanker in ■England, was arrested !n New York on June 10, on a charge of nnroccrlng the wife of iMt. C. C. Pinne.v, a "Wall Street broker, whom be met -while she was engaged In war work 1n iParis. The remarkable feature of the nflPslr is the persUtMry shown by Manzi. iHp on mc Co t'b'R T'nitPfl S ta in tho snme ship as •Mrs. Mnney, and persisted In calling at the Pinney home, until finally they were forced tn take a house at Portchester. 30 miles from Ni>w York. They left no address ■ t their town house, and generally did their best 'to prevent Manzl tracing their Whereabouts. However, the man appeared before the hou=e in Portchester. He knocked at the door, was denied admission, and thereupon crossed ihe road and pasted fcimself opposite the house. There he .reenined until ,Mr. I'inney telephoned for tbe police, who took 'Manzi into custody. A SHAKESPEARE SIGNATURE. The discovery of the signature of William 'Bhakfspeare scrawled 314 years ngo on the wall of the '-Haunted Gallery" in Hampton Court has Just been made. S'inkespeare authorities pronounced it authentic. Tho, dlscovery was made when directing renovations. On the wall of an old retiring room, , after cleaning, lie found the letter "8" ] followed by Illegible letters and concluding • with "kespeare." Beneath was a rough Sketch of a hand and the date, 1606. It is a matter of iiistory that Shakespeare's company visited tbe pnlnce at the date set down, and played ••Hamlet" before King Christian of Denmark. The company dressed in the "Haunted fJallery," near the great hall, where the play was enacted. The gallery, according to ancient tradition, wns haunted by the ghost of Catherine Howard, one of Henry VIII.'i six wives who I were imprisoned there. liistory tells us that she escaped confinement while the King won prnylng in his private chapel, and that her flight was discovered by court guards, who dragged her, screaming, to the King. ;• interrupting his devotions. It has long ' been said that Catherine nightly walks the jrallery shrieking. HARNESSING THE TIKES. |. A practical attempt to harness the tides *t the months of several British river? is j ohtnlned is to be used for generating elec-;, .triclty. The engineers who are making the , plans es'.iraate that the flectricky will be , obtained at only two-thirds the cost of elec- , trie power generated by coal. 1 3 The 'basic principle underlying most of ( the Inventions for harnessing the tides H . the working of a turbine by lid,!! ebb and [ flow. The 'tide makes tbe power at both j Its inflow and its outflow, o:?ly (easing for a comparatively short time during the . period of hnlf tide. In one Cheshire and Lancashire district the ireat variation in | the hour of the tide at neighbouring estuaries maht possible, through an ; Ingenious discovery. the production of ■ maximum energy during an almost eon,-;, tinuous period. j The plan for harneselns the tides devised ' ■by Lewis Woodhead. of Mnrcot Mill House,, (Broadway, Worcestershire, calls for the building of a cheap and efficient wall out]; in the sen or tidal river, in which tarblnws j| were placed. Mr. Woodbead claims that,; 10-foot turbines would be most economical, where suitable, each of wbi.-h would gen- ' crate over 300 horse-power with a five-foot r head Thns a mile of sea wall would be capable of generating. 120.000 horse-power. The position of such a wall would be four i ■a six miles from eliore. i'

The Federal Oovernment last year extended £17 477,000 on reputation ope." tl.ons, inclndins £11,238,000 on land settle-

TENOR INSURED FOR £100,000 Tom Kurke. on .En s ll.,h tenor *h on Wll'Him Morris has engaged for .. hundred concerts in Hie United States and Canada, wto have, the 3nr R est salary ever paid a Briti,, h *in S er,. a current rumoU r has it. and has been insured by the American manager for £100,000. HOW LONG IS A MILLION HOURS ? A way of realising the meaning of a milllrn is to think of what it means in time, says the "Morning Tost." Few people realise that there are less than a million days in the whole Christian Era: in fnct. if we count back a million days from ]!ll'n| we come to a date well before the" founding of Romp, while a million hours would take us back almost to the battle of Trafalgar, and a million minutes have not yet elapsed since the armistice was signed. A DETERMINED LYNCHING. Scores of men. members of a CJeorsria lynchlnp mob. foucht recently to obtain as souvenirs scraps of the clothing of a who had been shot to pieces t>y repealed' fusillades from rifles and revolvers. The trneedy occurred near the town or Rincon. The neßro was caught that day. and following his confession of the murder of a youne white plrl, was chained to a tree and oil poured over him with the idea of nurninß him alive. The doomed man. chain as an effort was made to apply a torch, and fled screaming down the road. He fell riddled with hullets from a hundred firearms before he ban got ten yards. MARSHALL FIELD'S RICHES. Captain Marshall Field is entitled to the income of his own three-fifths sharp of the estate of his grandfather, estimated at £2r>.000,000. and also to the income of the two-flfths share of his brother, the late •Henry Tield. according to the opinion o: the United States Circuit Court. Master Henry Anthony Marsh, the illegitimate child of Henry Field and MlfW Feeey Marsh, the court .holds, is not entitled to n share in the estate. while Henry's widow, now Mrs. Nancy Terkins Field Tree, of London, is entitled to the dower riehts really provided for Henry by the grandfather's will. 75,000 CASUALTIES. Speakins nt. the ninth annual dinner of the Kinc's Royal Rifle Corps Veterans' Association. Lieutenant-Colonel Sir KdwaTd .Ilutton said that since lftU approximately "•00 officers and 14.0T10 other ranks of the Kind's Royal Rifle Corps had died, and the total of casualties was about 70,0V>. The Ist and 2nd Battalions ceased to eiist after the first Battle of Y-pres. in 1014, and the 3rd and 4th suffered the same fate in the second battle of the salient in May, IPIS. Thus all the original regular units of the regiment wore finally shattered on the same croirod, and their dead nearly nil lay ■within that dreadful area of some two miles by 1,000 yards. NUNS IN REVOLT. A "revolution" hroke out in the Laurensiberg convent nt Prague the third week in .Tilly, among the nuns of the Order of Sisters of Charity. The nuns held a somewhat excited meeting in the presbytery, and sent a note to the- Archbishop of Prague asking that the statutes of their order be altered within n period of six weeks. They demanded the removal of various lady superiors, better food, more freedom, and permission to go for walks outside the convent.

The sisters threatened, in case their demands should not be fulfilled within six vent garden, and to discuss their demands before the ceneral public.

Meanwhile, the nuns have elected n nuns' council, which is empowered to curry on thp necessary negotiations with the archbishop and the lady superiors. QUIET DIVORCES. The institution of "quiet , ' divorces procured far from the madding crowd In some Ttiral district has received, after a somewhat turgid debate, the formnl approval of the committee on professional ethics of tic Xcw York County Lawyers' Association. Tbe Association bas liecn exercised' hv criticisms of one of the judges In West Chester County, which adjoins New York, of the devices employed hy counsel to protect those seeking n divorce from the glare of metropolitan publicity. The law nctually'provides that litigants residing in New York may, unless either of them objects, have their suits Sled and tried In another county. Fashionable , couples anxious to escape pnhli- ity have : been availing themselves recently of this provision in growing numbers, thereby adding immensely to the burden of district judges -who feel that they should not foe called upon to ent the Gordian knot of Xew York's marital disputes. The Lawyers' Association has now decided professionally that It Is quite ethical to secure divorces for clients in the cranpamtive seclusion of county courts, and expressly approves of the cn.stom of withholding the names of co-respondents from pleadings unless the courts expressly stipulate their disclosure. DUMPED WAR TROPHIES. A remarkable epidemic of gun-running has broken out in the north of Scotland , , and numerous specimens of flprmnn artillery now lie ignominiously at the bottom of burns and rivers. The epidenjle ■(writes a correspondent of the ".Morning Post") has twen particularly virulent in Aberdeenshire. the territory of

the famous Gordon Highlanders. One of Its earliest appearances was made in n small town in the county immediately after [the arrival of a IBoche field sun. The trophy had been placed In a prominent position, but it was not suffered to remain j there long. .During the darkness of the 'night a part.v of young men. said to be d'scbarged soldiers, ran the gun down to the river, a river famous for good angling, and threw it into a deep pool, where it now lies, almost completely submerged. A few days or nights later a similar Incident occurred in a village not far off. the victim on this occasion being a small German howitzer, weighing with its carriage about a ton and d-quarter. Th-li particular exploit did aot meet with the approval of the ex-Service men of the !locality, who promptly organised a rescue i party, and solved the gun and dragged it back to its place in the village square. ! The latest raids upon trophies have .been .formidable, well organised, and entirely ! public In the ancient burgh of Inverune, 'for example, several heavy pieces of artillery were seized by a largo crowd In the (daytime, and pitched Into the river Don. U 'similar enterprise has been carried out ! in the Deeside town of Banchory. Here the raiders, being unable to throw their gun over the •Bridge of l'en«n, ran it dovn a steep place lato the Dee. i