RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 222, 16 June 1930, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current

Events

LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Cosmos.)

Psychologist declares that single men are more truthful than married ones. But then they are not asked so many embarrassing questions.

A wintry snap makes one realise why half the world doesn’t know how the other half its legs from freezing.

The railway experts favouring shorter trains raise the point of safety in that, we presume, it is easier for a short train to dodge motorists at level crossings.

A Scottish iron moulder who neve? took an art lesson has exhibited a statue that well-known artists and sculptors took to be the work of some “great foreign artist.” At a guess, some artist of modernistic tendencies.

The famous “Bacon cypher” is to be sold to some public institution by direction in the will of its owner, the late Wilfred M. Voynich, noted bibliophile. Baconians will be 'disappointed to learn that the manuscript is that of Roger Bacon, who lived long before Shakespeare’s time.

When Mr. H. C. Reeves was handed a cheque for £21,0001 as a result of his good fortune in the recent Derby Calcutta Sweep, he said: “No doubt numbers of long-lost relations will turn up, but everyone will have a great dis- 1 appointment Nobody will get that money out of me. I have invested it' all in gilt-edged securities and will freeze on to it” We all have our pet plans as to what we would do if luck of this nature should come our way, and one can but congratulate Mr. Reeves on his hard-headed commonsense. As soon as someone wins a lucky fortune he becomes inundated with begging letters and invitations to subscribe to nearly everything in the world. Some soft-hearted winners have indeed handed over thousands of pounds to swindlers. It is interesting to see just what a few winners of sweep fortunes have done with their money.

Mr. William Kilpatrick, dental surgeon, at Cape Town, when he won £60,000 in the 1927 Calcutta Sweep, was formed into a limited company by his x friends. His mother in England under this scheme had a house and motor settled on her, and sufficient income to keep her in comfort for ttie rest of her life. Furthermore, he endowed a soup kitchen at Cape Town and benefited the nursing association at his home-town in England. Robert Bishop, when he won £26,000 from this same sweep in 1925. decided to carry on as head of a London Insurance concern, while a middle-aged bachelor in business in Bombay, on winning £63,000, decided the time had come to change his life. He married and retired to Ireland. On the other hand a lady in Skipton who won £15,000 from a local “sweep”’ acted absolutely opposite to Mr. Reeves. Instead of freezing on to her fortune, although she was by no means well off, she gave it nearly all to her relatives. Perhans one day someone will put into practice the ideal' way of dealing with this unlikely but interesting problem in our lives! ,

Segrave has given his life to prove that at speeds of one hundred miles an hour the strains on the hull of a speedboat are so enortnous only practical tests can find out the weak spots. In spite of mathematics the only way to prove something new of this type is to try it out and see what happens. Only a year ago, while striving to overtake Segrave in “Miss England” at <5 miles an hour at the Lido, “Miss America, piloted by a brother of the famous Gar Wood, struck Segrave’s wash. Both the pilot and the mechanic were pitched headlong into the water and “Miss America” went on without a guide. She jumped into the air and flopped into the water upside down. Although the hull was a hopeless wreck, the mechanic and the pilot, picked up unconscious, subsequently recovered.

Segrave, in his efforts to beat Gar Wood’s record of 93 miles an hour, has gone to all manner of expedients and innovations in the various boats that have been designed and tested out. For instance, the torque from a propeller driven by an engine of 900 h.p. is so great there is every danger of the boat turning over. Incidentally, an entirely new departure in propeller speeds was investigated. It was found possible and advantageous to run a P r °Pe at the enormous speed of over 6000 revolutions a minute. Few propellers run at even 2000 revolutions and most ships’ propellers at under 100, and this huge speed was only realised after experimental work carried out for month, on end. Gar Wood, when asked, once what on earth was the use of bunding these impossible speed monsters capable of travelling at 100 miles an hour, laconically said that when speedboats could travel at that speed liners would be travelling at half of it. He visualised speed model liners fitted perhaps with “steps” like hydroplanes crossing the Atlantic in half the time it is possible to do so to-day. Developments in this line would, of course, offer considerable competition to airships or aeroplanes, for a liner at 50 miles an hour could carry a load far greate. than any machine of the air.

It is slgnfiicant that even to-day there is talk about liners capable of speeds well over 30 miles an hour, and It is also significant that in 1904 no power-boats were capable of speeds ot even 24 miles an hour. It has taken a quarter of a century to almost quadruple that early record. By 1914 - txt miles an hour had been attained, and since then records ha' slowly but surely crept bigher an higher, until to-day a speed of 60 milean hour can be attained by qu indifferent boat. Moreover, the 1 duction of small outboard inotoij bo. t. canable of attaining speeds in th vicinitv of 40 miles an hoar, has made It nossible to interest the general pubin speed developments on water. Nevertheless one can but feel sorrv that it has cost the life of one of the leading speedboat experts to prove that at any rate for the while the engine power and design have gom aliehd faster than the materials called upon to withstand the strains. It is a costly hint.