NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 88, 15 April 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

TONGS V. REVOLVER. An armed man entered a bouse in Sugden Road, Lavender Hill, London, and demanded money from the occupier, Mr. Charles Bateman, a baker. While 3V. Bateman was remonstrating withtheman his wife, an elderly woman, seized the tore tongs and struck, the man overthe J hea . The intruder dashed out of the house, and although be fell through the roof of a shed which be bad to climb, he got clear away.

BABY'S BACHELOR FLAT. When Master Peter Barnato was ajed 43 hours, arrangements were made to give him a bachelor flat of bis own in the lipart of the West End of London. Feter is the son of Captain Woolf Barnato The snorting millionaire, and Mrs- Ba f na £°: He "came to town" in the Dorchester Hotel, and achieved the distinction of being the first baby born in a great London hotel for many years. Workmen were engaged knocking down walls m Captam Barnato's Grosvenor Square flat in orcle to add to it rooms next door, thus makinb ,1 self-contained flat for Baby Peter.

HOMER'S BIRTHPLACE. A Turkish archaeologist, jealously guarding a!ncient documents of his discovery, claims to have settled the dispute of centuries as to Hornet's birthplace. Selahett n Bey director of the Smyrna Museum, says that he has irrefutable P roo£ . sineer of Trojan heroes was born in Halka phfar! a quarter of Smyrna, but he will not divulge the contents or the history of the flocument. Smyrna is one of seven cities of Xia Minor that have hotly disputed since antiquity, the claim of being the Greek poet's birthplace.

BRIDGE FOR NEW ORLEANS. It has been the dream of the city of New Orleans for many years, to nave a bridge built there over the River Mississippi. At present no bridge exists lower than Memphis, over 500 miles up river. Plans have now been agreed on tor a bridge to span the Mississippi at New Orleans itself, and the first piles for the foundations have been driven in. Ihe bridge and approaches will be 4% miles long, providing two railway lines, two roads each 18 feet wide, and footpaths for pedestrians. The largest span will be 790 feet long and 135 feet above the river level, allowing ample clearance ,to oceangoing vessels. The cost of the bridge has been estimated at 14,000,000 dollars (£2,800,000 at par).

"ROCKET" MODEL IN WEIMAR. A collection of toys in the house adjoin ing the Goethe House at Weimar includes a tiny model of a railway train, which \ra» presented to Goethe by English friends in 1829 for his grandsons, Walter and Wolf gang. The locomotive is a copy of Sten! henson's "Rocket." Walter and Wolfgan"' must have been very careful lads, for the locomotive, tender and coaches, although made only of pasteboard, show no traced of hard usage.

LIVING IN A BARREL. Herr Leopold Carl Lauz and Iran Fiorina Lauz have lived in a barrel for seven years, have taken it through 22 countries, and have acquired a daughter The Lauzes decided to travel in 1925. They bought a large wine barrel, fastened bunk.j inside, bought a donkey, and started. The donkey pulled the barrel. The Lauzes ■walked. They say that they have tramped through most of Europe, Turkey, Syria Palestine, and Egypt.

CRANK AS REVIVAL EMBLEM. The crank has become the emblem o( Berlin's trade revival. " What the Nazi swastika and the Communist sickle and hammer tried in vain to achieve the little crank will do,"- is the reasoning of its backers. " Ankurbelung," or " cranking up business " is the mysterious word that is being passed around, and in almost every buttonhole a little silver crank can be seen. Results are vouched for by Berlin business men, who report better sales since the fad started.

SOW DEFEATS WOLVES. A swineherd named Borisha Churchitch in a mountain village, near Prokuplye, lost one of his animals on the hillside, and was obliged to return without it. Goin» back next morning through the snow to look for it, he was attacked by several wolves, of which he killed one, while the rest escaped. Close by he found the missing sow with a new litter of pigs, and round them a heavily marked circle of the footprints of the wolves, against -whom she bad managed to defend her young.

A GIRL'S ADVENTURE. Grete Blaha, a Vienna dancing-girl, on a tour through Italy, fell in love with, and became engaged to, a young Italian of whom she did not know that he was preparing an attack, on Signor Mussolini's life. The man was seized and sentenced to death and Grete Blaha with him, but her sentence was reduced to 30 years' prison. She protested her utter innocence and after six months in gaol, owing to the appeal of Chancellor Dr. Dollfuss to the King of Italy and the Duce, Grete Blaha was liberated.

SPRING CLEANING. Emilio Giuliano, a farmer living at Ascoli Piceno, Italy, strongly resents his wife's spring cleaning, which took place recently, and cost him fifty pounds at gold rates. Unknown to liis better half he secreted the notes in a wallet in the depths of a mattress, which consisted of dried leaves. His* wife went spring cleaning, changed the stuffing of the mattress, and threw the old one, including the wallet, into the pigsty, where the pig promptly gobbled up wallet and money. When Giuliano went home and heard of the nice clean mattress his wife could not understand why 'he chastised her so severely.

THE SMALLEST POST OFFICE. Postmaster C. L. Brown, at Burnsville, North Carolina, is saving what he terms the smallest post office in the United Stateg. It was Yancey County's first post office, and was built in 1863. It is about two by three feet, built in the form of a desk with sides, behind which the postmaster sat. Pigeonholes are placed along the top and sides where mail was stored, and letters were delivered through a small drop-leaf door in the front. The post office was built under the direction of J. L. Hyatt, who was appointed the first Confederate postmaster. The appointment was made by Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy.

DICER WINS AT MONTE CARLO. The new International Sporting Club at Monte Carlo, whose boast is "we are willing to play any game," iwas 12,003 dollars poorer because it accepted the thai lengc of Jay Merriwell, a tourist "from Jersey City. Merriwell proposed a game of chuckaluck, an ancient Chiuese dice game, which was popular in the mining and lumber camps of early American frontier days. Although the club maiugcment had never heard of chuckaluck* it agreed to abide by its boast. The game consists of fortelling combination 'oi three dice inside a shaker, with odds of 180 to 1 against the player. Merriwell guessed right three, times during the evening, and departed 12,000 dollars wealthier.

• THAWED OUT. Dr. N. A. Borodin, an eminent Russian biologist now experimenting at Harvard University, took an Alaskan blackfisli, frozen as stiff as shoe leather, out of a specially constructed electric refrigerator and dropped it in a jar of water. Within less-than two minutes the fish twitched, and in a few more minutes was threshins about briskly. The fish had been, to all appearances, dead—frozen into rigidity for forty minutes in a temperature of 15 degrees below zero, centigrade. The biologist explained that this state of _ suspended animation was known as anabiosis. He conceded that some day they might have some " practical " —that is, commercial—use, such as, for example, freezing live sturgeon at the Volga and revivifying them for sale alive in the inland cities of America. " You may ask why fish froxen in water, their natural element, fail to revive, and yet those frozen in dry air do as you have seen," the scientist said. " The answer I do not know„yet."