BREVITIES.

Evening Star, Issue 12687, 13 June 1907, Page 8

BREVITIES.

The first iron wire was drawn at Nuremberg in 1351. , . The torpedo was first made m 1777. The first plaster cast was made by Verochio rn 1470, Advertisements first appeared in newspapers in 1652. The first horse railroad was omit in 1826. . , . The folding envelope was first used in 1859. ’ Cedar frees numbering 2,600 are cat up annually and used in the manufacture of pencils m the United States. During last year the Church Army sent 3 000 poor and unemployed persons to Canada, at a cost of £20,000. The landlady at the White Lion Hotel at Spalding has a cat which is rearing a litter of six orphaned Angora rabbits. The Bank of England has twenty-four directors, who are elected by stockholders. A director must hold 2,000 worth of stock. There are 40,000 foreign seamen in the British Mercantile Marine, to whom we pav £2.000,000 annually in wages. The Albert Medal for rewarding acts of heroism bv land and sea was instituted in the year' 1866. The first class is an oval-shaped badge of gold, the second a bronze badge. Many other people besides Scotsmen wear the kilt. It is the national dress of the Albanian, the Messalian shepherds, and the mountaineers of Thibet and Assam frontiers. The stems of the cord weed sometimes grow to a length of 40ft, hut are extremely thin and tough. This seaweed is very dangerous to bathers who got entangled in it. The War Office has decided that all books written by officers on full pay must receive War Office sanction before publication. The Chief of the General Staff frill be responsible for the sanction. A stone weighing a ton and a-half was split open by blasting at Blackburn, Scotland, and a living worm was found embedded in it, being located eleven inches from the outside at the nearest point. The Archbishop of Canterbury has sanctioned a form of divine service in Esperanto in connection with the religious exercises to be held at the coming congress of the International Esperanto Society. There are in London 1,829 philanthropic institutions, which spend annual'y £6,557,100 in the relief of sickness and distress, in addition to unknown sums which are given by individuals and local agencies. Staff-captain Lonnie, the officer in charge of the Dunedin division of the Salvation Army, desires to acknowledge the receipt of £5 donation from the secretary (Mr Fulton) of the Agricultural and Pastoral •Society. The opening of a free art gallery at what hits hitherto been known as the Academy of Fine Arts, in Whitmore street, Wellington, took place yesterday. Forty pictures are now on the walls. The Rev. D. K. Fisher was on Tuesday inducted by the Dunedin Presbytery to the charge of Saddle Hill, Brighton, and Kuri Bush. Some of the building societies in Wellington have added i per cent, to the interest on short-dated deposits—six and three months —making the rates 3j and 2j per cent, respectively. The Auckland Harbor Board have decided to invite tenders for the supply of a steam tug. It transpired during the proceedings in the Auckland Assessment Court yesterday that one property in the centre of Queen street was valued at £3lO a foot, and another ;;t £520 per foot. These valuations were sustained. At the hearing of a divorce case yesterday in Sydney the wife, who was the petitioner, elicited the fact that the respondent. who is at present in gaol in San Francisco, had four wives living.