IN A NUTSHELL

Evening Star, Issue 17393, 1 July 1920, Page 1

IN A NUTSHELL

■ ANNIVERSARIES.' 1801.—First fteamer on the river Thames. 1817.—Sovereigns issued to replace guineas. 1851. —Victoria separated from New South Wales. 1862.—First telegraph office opened in New Zealand. 1875.—Strathmore wrecked on the Crozets. 1882.—First railway in Newfoundland opened from St. John to Topsail. 1909.—Sir W. Wylie (Indian Administrator) assassinated. Eggs are now selling over the counter in Dunedin at 2s 8d per dozen. A few weeks ago they reached as high as 4s ,3d. Hair cuts in America now cost 4s. It’s, enough to send the nation, to drink again. French newspaper proprietors decided last month that four-page papers will be sold at instead of Id. A poll was taken at Te Awamutn yesterday on .the question of raising £I2Q’OCO for electric reticulation in the district. The proposal was carried unanimously. A fly walks, in proportion to its size, 13 times as fast as a man can run. Electro-magnets have been used to lift as much as 60,C001b of steel castings in one operation. In the Supreme Court at Auckland yesterday Franklin John Smith, charged with criminal assault on a cirl, was sentenced to seven years’ hard labor. The once exuberant Empire Theatre of Varieties, London, is, it seems, likely to become a picture palace, and may exploit “ family ” films. An orang-outang at London Zoo is credited with having drawn one of its own teeth by means of a niece of twine twisted first round the aching molar and then round the bar of his cage. Shades of Darwin ! ' “I hear of a man wante.d hy the police over a large part of Scotland for_petty pilfering being actually caught in the act and allowed to escape ” (writes a contributor to the ‘ Glasgow Herald ’). “ The policeman—to whom his civilian captors sought to deliver him—pleaded that his time was up for going off duty, and therefore refused to have anything to dp with him.” Thomas Morris, a working cobbler, born of Scotch parents in North Wales in 1794, died on a ranch in Nebraska recently in his 126 th year. He ceased work at' the age of 106. but still continued to go-fish-ing regularly. He smoked a pipe and drank alcohol regularly until Prohibition came to sadden him, and perhaps .shorten his days