GENERAL ITEMS.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXIX, Issue 51, 7 February 1913, Page 8

GENERAL ITEMS.

SITTING ON A BOMB. A man was sitting on a box at the railway station pt Rocio (Portugal) the other morning when a bomb in the box exploded, seriously injuring him. A great part of a military powder factory near Lisbon was destroyed'the same morning by an explosion o'f nitroglycerine. One workman was killed. DAMAGES FOR ABSENCE, Peter Dixon and Sou, paper manufacturers, were awarded 1 by the Grimsby county magistrates £lO damages against Percy Heath, a machinist, for absenting himself without notice. The defendant, wbo had been in the firm's service since he left school, failed to attend one morning. A £15,000 machine was thus stopped and 20 men rendered idle for a few hours. ELECTROCUTION IN A BATH. Experimenting with a model battery, Henry Kyniond, the 14-year-old son ot a fanner and cattle breeder at Erdington, near Birmingham, connected his and 9000 for America; 5000 bales were wires supplying electric current to the house. When he turned on the battery death was instantaneous. A RED CROSS FLEET. The Dutch Red Cross Society is bringing forward a proposal for the organisation of an international Red Cross Fleet of at least three large ships with an international crew under the direction of an international committee.

A STORY ABOUT STUDY. Widespread regret has been caused by the death of Mr Whitelaw Reid, the American Ambassador. Commencing life as a journalist at 15 s a week, he became in turn war correspondent cotton planter, newspaper proprietor, and ultimately diplomat. He was an eloquent speaker, and had a fund of good stories to tell. One he was particularly fond of concerned a super in a drama whose sole duties consisted in walking on the stage and saying, "My lord, the carnage waits." "Look here," said the stage-manager one night, "I want you to come on from the left instead of the ricnt after to-night, and also want you to transpose your speech. Make it run thus: 'The carriage waits, my lord.'" The good super pressed his 'hands to his brow. "More study," he groaned, i more study!" BRIDE'S CONFESSION. Mrs Ralph Warwick, who was alleged 'to have confessed to murdering her husband at a farm in the Moosejaw district of Assiniboia, confessed at Moosejaw that she held a lantern while Stanley Price, a neighboring bachelor farmer, her lover, and William Shortel, a farm hand, killed her husband in a stable. Mrs Warwick's former name was owain. She- came from Newcastle-on- I Tyne 12 years ago. and is not yet 20. OFFICIAL WHEELBARROWS. The French officials on the Ivory I Coast, West Africa, are in future to ' make their official journeys in wheelbarrows. This is announced in the official gazette of the French African Colonies, which points out that the natives are showing an increased disinclination to carry either baggage or travellers on their heads. A one-wheeled vehicle of light m 4 elegant structure, capable of i carrying one passenger and his baggage, has therefore been devised. '