Out of the Way

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 169, 13 April 1935, Page 18

Out of the Way

CURIOSITIES IN THE NEWS

Gold worth £1,079,000 was landed at Plymouth from the liner Strathuaver recently—too late to get to London before the banks closed. So it was put on a Great Western railway truck and taken to a quiet siding until midnight, when it set off on its journey.

“My greatest joke will be after I die.” Such was the favourite expression of Senora Rita da Cruz, the goodhumoured beggar and seller of eggs in the markets of Lisbon. Now she is dead, at the age of 53, and she has left £5OOO to the charity home where she used to sell eggs and beg for free soup.

An old Neein tree at Myingan, Burma,'has suddenly begun to exude large quantities of a strange sap that tastes something like whisky and is intoxicating. The country people, who believe the sap is medicinal in small doses, think it is the gift of spirits residing in the “magic” tree.

Tons of earth and rocks suddenly crashed on a party of 27 laughing Kikuyu women excavating pottery clay from a pit. at Nairobi. Men, women and children rushed to the spot, in the Fort Hall area, and dug wildly with spades and bare hands. Not a single woman was recovered alive.

A dog beauty parlour has been opened in Paris. While madame is having iier beauty .attended to upstairs, her pet may have its whiskers plucked, teeth cleaned, nails manicured and forelocks curled. Turkish baths are also a feature of the “Institute de Beaute pour Chiens,” or, if pressed for time, a quick soap bath, followed by a shower and alcohol rub will be given by attendants in white uniforms.

A nurse at Swindon Poor Law Institution died after she swallowed a piece of wire while eating vegetables for dinner. This was disclosed at a Swindon inquest on Nurse Lipan Newton. aged 30. It was stated that a post-mortem examination revealed a piece of wire Jin. long in the larynx. There was no evidence to show how it came in the vegetables. A verdict was recorded that Nurse Newton died from septic pneumonia due to an abscess caused by the wire.

An extraordinary case of mass hysztoria threw one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Naples info turmoil for nearly" two hours. It required the police, the firemen and the militia to restore a degree of order. A little girl had convulsions in a classroom of an elementary school attended by 1500 children. Her class mates ran home when they heard her scream. The mothers thought the building had collapsed and besieged it to rescue their offspring. Firemen eventually tried to pacify them; so did the militia. After an hour’s panic the police managed to clear the school class by class.

Two boys, aged five and eight, were stated at Middlesex Sessions to have had to make hair curlers before going to school in the morning, at midday and in the evening. That, said counsel. was at the command of their father. The children and their mother had to make 4320 curlers iu order to earn 12/-. The father, Charles Ayres (42). of Willesden Lane, Willesden, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for neglecting his three sons, the youngest of whom is 34 years old. Mr. L. A. Byrne said the family lived in two rooms, the bed clothes consisting of rags, and the only person who did nothing was Ayres, who spent most of his time in bed. “He is too lazy to work.” added counsel, “too lazy to look for work, and apparently too lazy to apply for relief.”

A quarrel as to who should throw the switch that would electrocute him has saved the life of Jim Williams, a negro convicted of killing his wife at Tallaessee, Florida. Williams was actually in the electric chair when the argument started Both the prison superintendent and the local sheriff claimed the right to execute him, but as they could not agree, Williams was taken back to his cell, after having been in the chair for ten minutes. The time for his execution had now passed, and he could not lawfully be executed. His sentence has accordingly been commuted to life imprisonment.