RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 53, 26 November 1929, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

SIDELIGHTS ON CURRENT EVENTS LOCAL AND GENERAL (®y Cosmos.) “What is the dangerous ageT” asks a writer. This Is. What puzzles us about the dinosaur, after following the cablegrams for a Hmp, is the trait of leaving its thigh bones in America and Its eggs in Mongolia. » * • Canary birds have to demonstrate their ability to sing before they can be imported into the United States. Judging by a radio concert relayed from America recently, we should say that the same rule doesn't apply to all songsters. It is now alleged that a typist’s error in the Elsie Walker mystery inadvertently changed the word “farm” into “train.” From time to time errors such as this creep into important documents. Owing to. an error of one single comma, in some new Customs regulations, the United States was once forced to let in hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of heavily-taxed goods duty free for a whole year. Only last August a clerical error was reported in the Young Plan. Too large a percentage, by some curious oversight, had been allotted to France. When the first 37 annuities allotted to France were added up and divided to obtain an average, a mistake of nearly, five millions sterling was made. Nobody could discover how the soulless calculating machine had done such a human thing. The mistake, however, caused a political flutter, because before it was discovered, Britain and the smaller Powers, so it seemed, were burdened with most unfair quotas. » • •

Carelessness in the drawing of cheques cost a certain company a solid £BOOO. The cheque, made out for £lOO, when presented had had a figure “8” inserted, making a total of £BlOO. It was unhesitatingly honoured by the bank. In subsequent legal proceedings the judge decided in favour of the bank on account of gross carelessness on the part of the company. The space between the pound sign and the hundred, he said, was far too great, leaving ample room for the Insertion of another figure. But there are other curious ' and often amusing mistakes that do not have such far-reaching consequences. A certain butcher surprised his customers with a large notice, stating. “Wanted, a respectable boy for beef sausages'.” Another shop, evidently covering considerable ground, advertised, “Breakfasts, dinners and teas; a hearse for hire.” Victor Hugo himself had at least one famous clerical error to his credit In “The Toilers of the Sea,” he translated the Firth of the Forth in Scotland as “Premiere de la Quatrieme” —First of the Fourth. It was not till the book was translated into English that the error was discovered.

A message in the cable news from London a day or so ago, stated that the largest motor lifeboat in the world had been launched on the Thames, and that it had been specially built for speedy salvage of aeroplanes which which might come down in the English Channel. The lifeboat referred to was built for the Royal National Lifeboat Association at Cowes, and the money was provided out of a gift of £14,500 which the Peninsular and Oriental group of shipping companies made, through Lord Inchcape, to the institution in response to the Prince of Wales’ appeal last year to all the great shipping lines. The new lifeboat has 15 main and 100 minor watertight compartments, and displaces 45 tons of water. Her excess buoyancy will be equal to nearly one and a-half times that weight, so that even if severely damaged, she will remain afloat and manageable. She is driven by two SO h.p. engines, which will continue to work even if- entirely submerged, provided the air inlets are above water. The boat has two cabins, with accommodation for between 50 and 60 people, and in a calm sea could take 300 people on deck. Under the worst conditions of weather, she could in safety carry 150 people in addition to her crew. She carries 500 gallons of petrol, which at a cruising speed of eight knots, enable her to travel 500 miles. She has oil sprays in her bows for spraying oil on heavyseas, carries a line-throwing gun with a range of 80 yards, is lit by electricity, and has an electric searchlight, an electrically-driven windlass, and a life-saving net into which the shipwrecked can jump as the lifeboat lies alongside their vessels.

An effort is being made in Great Britain, a cable message states, to raise funds to preserve Dr. Nansen’s famous ship, the Fram, which is reported to be lying in dock in Norway in a serious condition. In 1890 Dr. Nansen propounded his scheme for a Polar expedition before the Royal Geographical Society in London, his theory being that a drift current set across the Polar regions from Behring Strait towards the East Coast of Greenland. The Norwegian Parliament granted two-thirds of his expenses. His ship was the Fram (Forward), specially built of immense strength and peculiar form, being pointed at bow and stern and having sloping sides, so that the ice floes, pressing together, should tend not to crush but merely to slip beneath and lift her. She sailed from Christiania on June 24, 1893. On September 22 the Fram was made fast to a floe in 7S degrees 50 minutes north, 133 degrees 37 minutes east. Shortly afterwards she was frozen in. On March 14, 1895, Dr. Nansen, being satisfied that the Fram would continue to drift safely, left her in 84 degrees north, 101 degrees 55 minutes east, and went north on foot, reaching Spitzbergen and returning to Norway. A week later the Fram also reached there safely, having returned by the west coast of Spitzbergen.

Paris is slowly recovering from the shock it experienced in late September when an accident of the law led to the amazing discovery that the gay city had a flat that has remained unoccupied for fifteen years at a period when all Paris has been searching for flats. An order of expulsion having been granted to the proprietor a bailiff called to notify the tenant. As the concierge knew nothing of the person the police were informed and had the door of the flat opened. Though luxuriously furnished and filled with rare vases. Chinese statuettes, bric-a-brac, and bronzes, the place showed signs of being long uninhabited. Inquiry has revealed that its former occupant was a German, who left Paris hurriedly on the outbreak of war and has never attempted to recover his property. The presumption is that he was killed early in the war.

If you think the day of miracles has passed, just stand outside a beauty parlour, _