RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 264, 4 August 1936, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events (By Kickshaws.) The surprising thing about that woman delegate's suggestion for people to marry in the cause o£ peace is that she is married.

It seems that the next war will be a radio war if we are to believe Marconi, but he omits to say if we will be able to turn it off when we have had enough.

We note that an expert in America believes that the sun will explode and blow the world to bits, and as soon as we catch up with worrying about all the other things we already have to worry about we will start worrying about this.

“A.C.” sends along the following:— “Your paragraph regarding lassoing of trout puts me in mind of a method which was common when I was a boy in the North of England. Get a thin wire—a strand from a rabbit snare is best—and put an easy slipping loop, nearly twice the diameter of the trout, in one end. Fasten the other end of the wire to a stiff stick a few feet long. Lower the loop into the water about two feet in front of the trout. Move it slowly down stream till the loop is over the thickest part of the fish. Then whip it quickly back over your head, and you will be successful nine times out of ten. It may not be sporting, but it is effective. I’d be ashamed to do it now, but when a boy I’ve done it often. Perhaps the Bishop of Wellington knows the trick too? It’s the nearest I know to lassoing them, but perhaps New Zealand boys may be acquainted with the method?”

One cannot permit the death Of M. Bleriot to pass without contrasting the aviation standards of the first flight across the English Channel ■with the standards of to-day. In those far-off days there were few rules laid down. Aeroplanes were even made of paper with bamboo and fencing wire. The engine would dishearten even a nonmechanical motorist of to-day. Why it went is a problem that experts today are still trying to discover. Few of the special alloys now known were in use. There was no knowledge of aerodynamics except what had been passed down from Daedalus and son. aviation experts. There has been a certain amount of subsequent experiment. Archytae had experimented with a flying dove in B.C. 400, and Friar Bacon had predicted the possibility of flight From 1800 onwards experiments were being made, and in 1843 a flying machine haffibeen invented. In 1868 it was annmfficed that a man had flown by muscular power. In 1895 Mr. Maxim claimed to have flown 500 feet. It was Bleriot, however, who took the snags out of flying, but whether we should praise him most for the aeroplane or its engine is a moot point. It was the petrol engine that gave the aeroplane the power to fly.

One can well believ. that the eleventh Olympic Games have opened in Germany with the thoroughness and genius for organisation for which Germans are famed. It is indeed a long interval between the opening of this Olympiad and the opening of the very first Olympiad in 776 B.C. The one link between the two is that men still run and jump. Strictly speaking, an Olympiad is not an event but an interval of time; a period of four years between each celebration of the Olympic Games. These Games eventually were used as a method of reckoning time. The old-time Olympic Games, however, came to an end in 394 A.D., after a run of well over a thousand years. During that period history fell into the habit of chronicling events according to the conquerors in these games. When speaking of the past, even to-day, one says that it was the year when Australia won the tests and so-and-so made three centuries. We have, however, taken sport out of the calendar and chronicle time by the reign of kings.

The modern Olympic Games did not begin until 1896, the first event being held at Athens. We have to thank a Frenchman, by name Baron Pierre de Coubertin, for this fact. This Baron was the first president of the modern counterpart of the Games. It was decided to hold them every four years as of yore. The second Olympic Games were held at Paris in 1900 and the third in 1904 at St Louis, U.S.A. The fourth Olympic Games were the first in which nearly all the nations were represented. It was held in London in 1908. Perhaps this explains Britain's willingness to stand aside and permit the 12th Olympiad to be field in Japan. The fourth Olympiad was notable for the fact that lawn tennis and Association football were introduced. These two games were however, omitted from and 1926 onwards. Rugby football was also dropped in 1928. The sixth Olympiad was to have been held at Berlin in 1916. The Great War intervened and Germany has had to wait until 1936 to demonstrate her genius for organising events of this nature Women were permitted to take part in 1928, which also marked the first time that a German team took part since the war.

The purchase of the Abel Tasman for £l6O and her cargo for £4OO is a grim reminder of the perils of the sea. Obviously the vessel and her cargo are worth far more than that.—if the sea doe® not intervene. The sale, in fact, is a measure of the peril in which this vessel involved herself when she broke her moorings and got into difficulties on the bar. Anybody who wants to pick up a ship on the cheap has every opportunity wffien she becomes wrecked. Men are always endeavouring to get something for very little, and a wrecked ship offers a sporting chance. There is an Icelandic farmer who made a fortune by buying up an English trawler, _Max Pemberton, for the huge sum of £5. He patched her up, refloated her, towed her to harbour and -sold her as a reconditioned vessel for many thousands of pounds If all goes well, and the sea does not claim her own, there is little doubt that the Abel Tasman will not show a loss to the purchasers. It is that little “if” that has made her go cheap.

“Could you please tell me through your columns the amount of wages that has been lost in big strikes in recent years, particularly in 1926 in Great Britain?” asks “R.G.8.”

[About 544,000,000 days' work hare been lost in strikes since 1893. involving over 20 000.000 people. The general strike in England accounted for 15,000 000 working days and involved over 1,500.000 people In the engineer ing dispute in 1922 13,000 000 working days were lost. In the coal industry in Britain the strike of 1893 lost 21,000.000 working days 1912 31,000.000 working days. 1920 16,000 000 1921 72.000,000, 1926 145,000,000, making a total in that industry of 185,000,000 working days J