IN THE PAPERS

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1180, 1 December 1924, Page 11

IN THE PAPERS

Forty-six years ago there was only ono telephone in the world. To-day there are 14,000,000 instruments in the United States alone.

Princo Olaf, the Crown Prince of Norway, whose mother is a sister of King George, is taking up quarters in Balliol College, Oxford. He will have the distinction of being the first European Prince to be in residence in Oxford since tlio Prince of Wales went up to Magdalen.

'When tlio first team of English cricketers left for Australia, the Morning Post of October 21, 1801, reported their sailing in the Great Britain from Liverpool. Tlio voyage took a couple of months, but it was March, 1862, before the results of their first matches in Melbourne reached London. Not until 10 years later was a cable laid between England and--Australia.

A picturesque memoiy is recalled by tlio unsuccessful candidature of Theodore Roosevelt’s son as Governor of New York State, for it was to the same office that the father was elected' in 1898 immediately after lie had become a world figure. It was in that year lio came fresh from tlio front as Colonel Roosevelt of tlio Rough Riders, and from that time till his death he was always .in the limelight.

A good story conies from Russia. A band of pilgrims, headed by an old peasant, recently visited Lenin’s mausoleum in tlio Red Square, Moscow. Above tlio tomb, oil a marble slab, nro inscribed tlio words: “Lenin is dead, but his words live.” On reading this inscription the old peasant, in the fullness of his heart, blurted out, “Hitch, Hitch ! It would be bettor if thou wert alive and thy works were dead!” The unconscious humorist was promptly arrested for this blasphemous utterance.

There are only 40 licenses for homo brewing in force in Scotland, in comparison with 5,490 in England. It that because Scots have given up hope of recovering the recipe for the most famous of all homebrews—heather ale? Legend avers that the secret was held by a family of Piets, who died rather than divulge it to their Scottish conquerors, and though heather ale of sorts has been brewed in more recent times, it lias never equalled the reputed excellence of that old-time drink ol the gods.

D’Artagnan, the fourth of “The Three Musketeers,” had for his prototype one Charles do Bats-Castelmore, of Audi, in the Gera Department of France; and the council there is erecting a memorial in his name. It was a real Chevalier D’Artagnan, captaingeneral of the King’s Musketeers, who arrested Foquet, the for Finance. ami we have Dumas’s word for it in his famous Preface that his tale of D’Artagnan, Athos, Forthos, and Arnmis was based on original manuscripts in the Royal Library.

Preparing for burning 218 wooden ships, built by the United States Shipping Board at a cost of £47,000,000 for use in the war, are being made by the Western Marine and Salvage Company, which has an option to buy the ships from the Government for £52,000, providing the metal in the first ten destroyed shows the purchasers a fair prolit on the investment. After the wood has been burned the copper, iron, and steel will bo salved. It is reported that £5.000 worth of oil will be used in making the fire.

The post of Lord High Steward of King’s Lynn, to which Prince Henry (the King’s third son) is shortly to be publicly appointed, carries with it a salary of TIU a year, which, however, is uhva ys devoted to charity. His Royal Highness is the first to hold the oilice since the death of Lord WalsingJiame live years ago, and will now oiiieially represent one of the oldest boroughs in the United Kingdom. The Lord High Stewardship goes back at least 41)0 years, and it is probable, in view of the. fact that the town’s charter of incorporation was granted- by King John, that its foundation dates from an even earlier century.

Despite prohibition, the insurance companies in the United States continue to list alcoholism as a cause of death. Returns for the first half of 1924 show a slight decline, and it is stated that deaths from acute poisoning by wood and denatured alcohol appear to bo decreasing in tho industrial world. In experiments on guinea-pigs comparatively recently it was found that after several generations the descendants of alcoholic parents were supernormal, apparently because alcohol weeded out the weaklings from tho stock. The returns are silent as to whether, as a result of prohibition, wood alcohol has already killed off most of the susceptibles or whether it is ceasing to attract drinkers;