INTERESTING ITEMS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 341, 1 March 1911, Page 6

INTERESTING ITEMS.

© —3? The composer o ; ' "Keiiy" says the Isle of Man is probably the finest song-booming centre in Great Britain. A million and a half of the Charles Dickens stamps have been printed, and it is estimated that a third of this number are already sold. Lord Kitchener has returned to Khartoum from a ten days' shooting trip on the Blue Nile. His bag included an exceptionally fine kudoo antelope. A fine of 15s, with an alternative of 14 days' imprisonment, was the reward of a Sheffield man who stole two pennyworth of soap from a street lavatory. The Corporation of London is seeking Parliamentary powers to render the defacement of pavements for purposes of advertisement a criminal offence. The estate of the late Henry Osborne Havemeyer, the American sugar refiner, who died three years ago, has been appraised at 1,710,165 dollars. During the past five years the public bequests of £IOO,OOO each and upwards have been in number 35 for an aggregate amount of about 10J millions of pounds. During the past year 30,403 applications for letters patent were filed at H.M. Patent Office. About twn-thirds of these may be expected to result in patents being granted. A consignment of IS ounces of hothouse strawberries, grown at Worthing, has been sold at Covent Garden. The fruit realised 50s, or slightly more than Is per ounce. Miss Sarah Rayner, of Huddersfield, has just completed the remarkable record of having attended regularly the Buxton Road Wesleyan Sunday School for sixty-two years. For her services to dramatic art Miss Ellen Terry is to be presented by the millionaire founders of the New Theatre, New York, with the Founders' gold medal. It was stated at an inquest recently that during the last year the lifeguards on Manchester tramway cars acted successfully in 86 cases, and only failed to save life in three cases. According to the "Glasgow Herald" the total number of the world's battleships and armoured cruisers now being built is seventy, with a tonnage of 1,500,000, reprseer.ting £140,000,000. The tobacco duties collected at Bristol during 1910 amounted to £4,385,545, an increase of £581,793 over the amount in 1909. For the first time the total Customs duties have exceeded £5,000,000. A of peridots has been discovered in Alexandria. These stones, which are amber in colour, for many years have been found in large quantities in Upper Egypt, but never before in this section of the country. The Lusitania's eastward passage occupied 4 days, 15 hours, 50 minutes. This, says the Exchange Telegraph's Liverpool correspondent, beats the vessel's previous best passage. The average speed was 25.10 knots. The Local Goverment Board's statement of pauperism in November in England and Wales gives the number j as 8018,53 —285,373 indoor and 516,- j 480 outdoor —a ration of 22.2 per 1000 i inhabitants, as against 22.6 per 1000 j in November, 1909. *'Bow" brooches in diamonds filled in with pearls, and the dog collar outlined with brilliants, are to be re- | vived. All the new jewellery is very j big, and the vast size of the orna- | ments displayed in the jewellers' win- | is a remarkable feature, j In those days of luxuriously hotels j there is revived, not unnaturally, the ; story of Englishmen who, staying at j an American "palace" noted for its i extravagant decorations, refused to ; put his boots outside the bedroom door : "for fear they would be gilded." ;' The coal shipments from Tyne ; Dock, the chief coal shipping centre j on the Tyne, were down last year by 800,000 tons, the shipments being I the smallest for fourteen years. The decrease is chiefly attributed the Eight-hours Act strike at the beginning of the year. i