NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 17, 20 January 1934, Page 4 (Supplement)

NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

GIRL IN FLAMES ON STAGE,

Nearly 2000 people watching the performance at Bournemouth Pavilion of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo were horrified to see a member of the company rush on to the stage in flames. The girl had been making up in the dressing room, using a candle to soften the grease paint. Suddenly her flimsy dress touched the candle and burst into flames. She rushed to the middle of the stage. By this time her clothes were blazing. A stage hand ripped off her burning dress and smothered the smouldering remains. The girl was not seriously injured. A MAYOR'S EXCURSION. The ingenious device of placing himself under arrest was recently adopted by the peasant mayor of a Slavonian village, who wished to undertake a somewhat costly journey to private business at the public expense. In company with several friends, nominally his official escort, he travelled as a prisoner on a free pass made out by himself. The suspicions of the conductor of the train were aroused by the cheerful demeanour of the party, arid eventually led to an inquiry and to a sentence of imprisonment for both "prisoner" and "cscort." ELECTRICITY FROM STEAM. The success of Italy in utilising its natural resource of volcanic steam for generating electric power may sway other nations, with similar conditions, to take up the method in earnest. In 1931 the first steam well was harnessed by Prince Ginori Conti and a year later a second was put to work. In the 32-square-mile area it is estimated that there are 320,000,000 kilowatt hours of electrical energy available, which is equivalent to that obtainable from more than 200,000 tons of coal. In the United States the steam wells of Sonoma County, California, hold the most promise for electrical plants of the same type. Like Italy, the region is geologically a "youngster" and has volcanic tendencies, as evidenced by the symptom of natural steam issuing from the ground, j

MAN WHO ESCORTS CANARIES. For the fiftieth time Herr Oppermann, of Alf eld in the Harz, is on his way to America, pursuing his unique occupation of travelling companion and personal escort of canaries. When he returns, completing his 100 th crossing, he will be able to record the transporting of at least 100,000 of the yellow songsters to the United States. He takes over birds bred round St. Andreasberg, the ski-ing resort in the Northern Harz, for sale in America. This district is the clTief breeding centre for the famous "Harz Roller." Before the war the export value of the birds was 750,000 marks. Herr Oppermann's calling is no sinecure. He has to be a combination of steward, valet, waiter and chambermaid to liia small charges, attending to their food, temperature and cleanliness.

LADY HOUSTON'S "£200,000 OFFER." Lady Houston has announced that she is prepared to renew her offer to give £200,000 for the air defence of London. Eighteen months ago, she said, she offered a similar sum towards the £5,000,000 needed for our forces of defence. This was refused, and she was told privately "that Mr. Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, wished to accept it, but that tho Prime Minister would not permit this." Afterwards she was asked if she would give the same sum to form an air defence for London. She did this, but the offer was also-refused, "not by the Minister in charge, but by order of the Prime Minister. I gladly renew my offer," she adds, "and am willing to give this sum for the air defence of London. Will the Government still dare to refuse this offer?" 1850-YEAR-OLD SHOP. Excavations at Herculaneum under Hie direction of Professor Majuri have brought to light a block of houses on the east side of the city revealing mural decorations, mosaic floors and some pieces of wooden furniture of considerable beauty. They are in a good state of preservation. I*ear the houses the excavations have revealed a small shop which is not unlike those still to be seen ill the streets of Resini, the town built over part of the buried city. Not more than (n't long by 7ft wide, the shop retains its original form, with the counter and vessels in which oils, cereals and olive were kept, as they were when the city, together with Pompeii, was overwhelmed by the great eruption of Vesuvius in A.I). 79. The ! shop might well serve its purxjose to-day. SANCTUARIES FOR THE DEAD. Mrs. Stanley Baldwin, presiding at a council meeting of the women's section of the London Municipal Society, said: — "In all slum clearance schemes I feel it is important that in the rebuilt areas there should be provided a little sanctuary for the dead. So often in the present overcrowded areas, when someone dies, there is no place for tho body to be laid until the funeral except under the table or under the bed. I heard of one case recently in which a little child died, and the only place the mother had to lay the body was in tho scullery. In my opinion this is not sanitary, it is not reverent, and it is not even human. All we want is a small '.sanctuary with colour-washed walls and undenominational. I wrote a letter to the L.C.C. urging this need, and the letter was received most sympathetically. They said that such a sanctuary was being provided in their new areas. The only trouble is they insist on calling this little place a 'morgue,' but I think the word 'sanctuary' would be much better."

NOT TILL 2020. Beginning in the year 2020 a number nf poor students in Swedish schools win benefit from a fund established by Mil Idtv Sohlberg, 70 years old, a retired school teacher. Miss Sohlberg gave 34,000 kronor stipulating that it must not be used until compound interest builds the fund ud i 1,000,000 kronor, or about £.50,000. g a t° investment at 4 per cent will, it i 8 computed, require SGVi years to meet this pro" viso.

MASTERPIECE iN ATTIC. An authentic picture of the Venetian painter Giorgione, representing the meet, ing of Aeneas and Anchises in the Elysian Fields, has been found in an attic in the sixteenth century villa Garzoni, near Venice. Workmen overhauling the villa came across a dirty and almost unrecognisable canvas in a corner in which it had lain for centuries. The canvas was cleaned and put among the other pictures forming the villa's collection. Nothing more was thought of it until the collection was visited by an art critic, Signor Giorgio Sangiorgi. Inquiries revealed that the picture was a work by described by Marco Antonio Michiel, who owned the villa in the seventeenth century. The picture had long been given up as lost.

CEYLON'S VENDETTAS. The vendetta system is not confined to I Corsica, according to a recent case heard I before a Ceylon magistrate, in which a long-standing feud between two families led to Court proceedings.' The feud, some* generations old, was between the family of a village schoolmaster and that of two children attending his school. The relatives of the children, feeling that in this case the balance of power was maladjusted begged the local magistrate to adjust it! In the course of the proceedings it was revealed that villagers often keep diaries in which they note injuries or fancied injuries done to them and their families, and "that these diaries are handed down from father to son. In most cases, as in this one, the' magistrate advises the litigants to settle their disputes out of Court.

KILLED BY BOWLER HAT. , At an inquest at Market Harborough on 3 Miss Elizabeth Mary Hill, 21, who was i killed when out with the Fernie Hunt, it 1 was stated that she had a two-inch cut on - her forehead. A doctor said that the 3 injury was caused by her bowler hat. "A fc bowler cuts like a knife," he added. Death 2 was due to a fractured skull. It was 1 stated that Miss Hill was a splendid horset woman, and that she was thrown when her . horse slipped on a tar macadam road. A : verdict of accidental death was recorded. I 6000 PILGRIMS FOR ROME. 1 Six thousand pilgrims under the leader- . ship of 20 bishops left Fi-ance in five , trains for Rome. Their object was to attend the ceremony at St. Peter's of the canonisation of Bernade.tte Soubirous, of Lourdes. When a girl of 13 in 1858, Bernar dette, a shepherdess in the Pyrenees, claimed that she had seen the Virgin in ; a vision. The girl scarcely understood French, but she stated that the Virgin spoke to her in the patois of the region, j The girl is reputed to have seen the Virgin several times afterwards in a grotto at Lourdes. A statue of the Virgin has since been erected over the grotto, and is the object of Roman Catholic pilgrimages. BEAVER VISITS FIRE STATION. Patrolman John McGrath saw a curious bundle of fur moving laboriously down Church Street, Hoosick Falls, New York, early one morning. At first lie thought it was a dog that had been injured, but as the creature drew nearer the policeman saw that it was a 751b beaver. Hunters and trappers say that of all animals the beaver is the most anxious to shun human beings. Not so this beaver, however. It plodded down the street until it reached the open door of a lire station, entered the building and curled up for a sleep under the big red fire engine. The only beaver colony in the vicinity is six miles distant. A game warden escorted the animal back to its natural habitat.