NEWS IN BRIEF.

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 April 1918, Page 8

NEWS IN BRIEF.

It is said Mark Twain smoked 300 cigars a month. Spain's Government oflicails arc to gei; a war bonus of a. mouth's salary. Sixty billion drops of fog have ucen found to equal ono-tevenLh of a. glass of water. The Tsar’s daughter Olga is said to be giving piano lessons to children n Tobolsk. A rubber shoe-sole, properly made, w]b last from two to tluee times as long as a leather one. A vacuum street-cleaner has been perfected, working just like the inaoor vacuum-cleaner. Iron embedded in concicte in Germany has been found to be free from rust after

more than 45 years. A surgical sewing-forceps is a. new contrivance which gicatly facilitates the closing-up of wounds. Beethoven became deaf, and long before his death could not even hear the drums in the orchestra. The first dynamo ever constructed is believed to have been that made in the year by Michael Faraday.

During the past eleven months 4,392,000 workers have received advances iu wages amounting to £1,507,590 a week. Coal is formed from decayed vegeta b-.e matter under pressure at temperatures not exceeding 300 dog. centigrade. Chinese breed stags for tlie'r horns, which arc cut off when soft and used for the manufacture of native medicines. An aeroplane with seven planes av- ' ranged in a semi-circle > is claimed by its ' French inventor to be perfectly stable. ‘ Paper cups are becoming so popular ' that the glass workers of Ohio are threat- . cuing to boycott the soda fountain. j Flaws in steel, otherwise difficult of ; detection, can now be discovered by the alterations which they cause in electr c

currents. A woman is the inventor of a horn to lie carried on the rear of an automobile and sounded automatically when the «•>» is backed. When the first train, weighing tons, crossed the' new Quebec Bridge it depressed the great central span only fivesixteenths of an inch.

Four ex-Lord C'lifiiioellors Isolds Hal*l in ry, l.nrdnirn, Haldane, and limitmaster, are aI, present receiving of £SOOO a year cadi.