WORLD-WIDE NOTES.

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2650, 8 December 1919, Page 7

WORLD-WIDE NOTES.

MEANING OP "STUNT." "Stunt" is a word that is as worn out as "camouflage." It was greatly in favour in baseball circles before the war. Probably* the noun means "a dodge for stopping the growth of anything." and generally "any clever dodge or trick."

Private A. Ware, of Leytonstone, recently discharged from the Essex Regiment, probably holds a record for the number of wounds received in action. Altogether he received 130 wounds, and after being a considerable time in hospital was discharged with about 100 pieces of shrapnel in his body.

John Mullins, a coal-miner of Hemphill, Pennsylvania, claims a world's tonnage record for mining and loading coal in a single month. His output was 691 tons, which is over twenty-seven tons daily. Mullins's wages for the month amounted to £B9 16s. 7d. POETRY OF ADVERTISING. An advertising man, who has recently returned from the Orient, says the Japanese merchants and manufacturers who have chosen to make use of printer's ink are not disposed to limit themselves to dull, prosaic statements concerning the excellence of their wares. Among the entertaining bits that the traveller noticed in his study of Japanese advertising are these :

"Goods dispatched expeditiously as a cannon-ball."

"Parcels done up with such loving as a wife bestows upon her husband." "The print of our books is as clear as crystal ; the matter charming as a singing girl." "Customers are treated as politely as by rival steamship companies."

"Our silks and satins are as smooth as a lady's cheeks and coloured like the rainbow." DOCTOR'S HIGH FEES. High fees were paid to State doctors under the old Boer Government. Dr. Hans Sauer, who was medical officer for the Johannesburg district thirty years ago, says he was entitled under law to charge £lO 10s. for every post-mortem, and he held as many as ten a day. The attendances on floggings at the jail ' were even more remunerative. The fee for attendance at each flogging was £1 for each'person flogged ; as the punishment was inflicted on as many as a hundred persons an a single day the fees accruing amounted to a good deal at the end of the month.

CONCRETE SHIPS IN COLLISION

Ferro-concrete ships would not be hopelessly smashed like earthenware vessels if they came into collision. If one ferro-concrete vessel travelling at high speed ran into another vessel of the same class bow on, damage would naturally result, but the mischief would " be much less than that which would happen to two steel ships, owing to the greater capacity possessed by ferro-concrete for the absorption of shock. The only instance on record of a collision of two concrete vessels was furnished during the flooding of a dock basin at Balboa, on the Panama Canal, when two concrete pantoons, 120 ft. long by 2Sft. beam collided violently without suffering any damage.