RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 55, 29 November 1937, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current

Events

(By

Kickshaws.)

Why, asks a visitor, do so many people come to New Zealand to see Rotorua? Well, if they went anywhere else they wouldn’t. » * *

A low-flying aeroplane over a part of England, it is reported, has stopped hens laying and made them moult. Familiarity with aeroplanes, it seems, has failed to make the birds heirminded.

The relative food values of wine and milk are to be tested on identical twins. An identical twin, we understand, is what happens when someone pushes the tests of the value of a wine a little too far.

“As a reader of your very interest- ( ing column, I would be much obliged if you could supply me with a little information,” says “Wager.” “A friend of mine and myself have bad a small wager as to which year the motion picture actress, Bette Davis, won 'he Motion Picture Academy Award. My friend claims it was 1936 and I say it was 1935. Could you please inform me through your column which is correct? Also, if Miss Davis did not win the Award in 1936, the name of the actress who did.” [Messrs. Warner Brothers _ kincily advise as follows: —“The position is that the actors and actresses who win the awards for the best performance do not actually receive these golden statuettes until the following year, hence the reason for the argument between ‘Wager’ and his friend. Bette Davis was presented with the award in 1936 for the best performance in the year 1935, the picture being ‘Dangerous.’ In 1937 Louise Rainer was presented with the award for the best performance in the ‘Great Ziegfeld’ in 1936. The winners of the previous years’ performances (actresses) are: —1928, Janet Gaynor; 1929, Mary Pickford; 1930, Norma Shearer; 1931, Marie Dressier; 1932, Helen Hayes; 1933, Katharine Hepburn; 1934, Claudette Colbert.]

Tiie curious case mentioned recently in the news of a presentation watch that slipped between the woodwork of a ship and turned up many years later when the vessel was broken up is a reminder of the strange fate that befell a certain thief in England. When he realised that detectives were on bis heels, on the Dover-Calais crossing he hid a valuable diamond necklace behind a certain piece of loose panelling he had detected in one of the lounges. Subsequently he was arrested for another crime and sent to prison for five years. He spent bis time in prison working out what he was going to do with the diamond necklace when he got his freedom. It would have been missing so long, probably everyone would have forgotten.about it and its disposal would be that much the easier. His first day of freedom found him taking a ticket on the ship in which he had hidden the necklace. When he got the opportunity he made his way to the lounge where be had hidden it, only to find that the ship had been renovated in the interval.

Some of the coincidences that have occurred in things that have been loss and found are so surprising one should never despair that anything is permanently lost. A clergyman named Drake, of Orange, Texas, lost a gold ring while swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. Tim ring bore an inscription. Fishermen found the ring inside a cod 28 years later. Mr. Fred Hartzell lost a watch in a stream in California when he was fishing. A year later he caught a trout in the same stream. When he cleaned the fish his own ■watch fell out. Colom I Johnson, a keen golfer, was demonstrating a golfing shot to friends beside the Delaware River. Eight years later toe colonel was fishing in the same river. He hooked a 301 b. carp. Inside it was the missing golf ball. Another curious lost and found occurrence was observed when a member of the Sywell Aero Club, England, took a friend who lived nearby for a joyride. The wind caught the friend’s glasses and blew them away when in mid-air. Nearly two years later the friend was digging in his own garden. He dug up his lost glasses. Readers perhaps can supply other curious instances of this nature which are more common than the laws of probability would have us believe. ♦ ♦ ♦

The recent report of a butcher who cut a chunk off himself instead of off a piece of beef is an accident that does not occur very frequently. Nevertheless, in spite of the infrequency of some accidents the marvel is that events combine to enable them to occur at all. For example, a matador who was charged by a bull escaped without harm. The animal, however, tossci the matador’s sword into the air. It. descended among the spectators and killed a man. A certain farm hand who bad a nasty accident with a pig must have wondered how it all happened. He was taking pig to market in a lorry. The pig managed to get out, climbed up beside the driver and forced his hands from the wheel. The lorry landed upside down in the ditch and the man was badly pig had bitten off his finger. A small boy at Blyth, Northumberland, nas reason to remember a strange accident that befell his father. The lad had been naughty. His father bent him over bis knees to whip him. Up went the good right arm, but no blow fell. To his amazement father found himself unable to lower his arm—he had dislocated a bene in his shoulder.

“As you have in the past willingly answered the many inquiries put to you, I feel sure you would not mind enlightening a country bumpkin as to the following items,” says “Moonstruck.” “Unlike you-city folk, we in the Rangitikei district had a perfect view* recently of the partial eclipse of the moon, and since then our thoughts have turned skyward: (1) What causes the eclipse of the moon? (2) Is it the same influence that makes a new moon every month by almost obscuring the whole of the moon? (3) What causes the eclipse of the sun?” [An eclipse of the moon is caused by the shadow’ which the earth casts on th P moon when the earth is between the moon and the sun. As the moon moves in an orbit tilted away from the orbit made by the earth in its journey round the sun, eclipses of the nioon do not occur twice a month but only occasionally. An eclipse of the sun occurs when the moon gets between the sun and the earth thereby hiding the sun. The phases of the moon—new, half, full, etc., result from the various positions in which the moon finds itself every month in respect to the earth and the sun. The moon is full when it is on the side of the earth away from the sun, and we see the whole half of the moon lit up by the rays of the sun. A new moon, occurs w’hen the moon is roughly between the sun and the earth, only a small crescent of the complete moon being illuminated in the rays of tlie sun as viewed from this world. An eclipse occurs only when the moon, the earth, and the sun arc in line in tlie same plane.