How the World Wags

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 4, 30 October 1931, Page 7

How the World Wags

Of the 1234 American banks which have been suspended since January 1, only 202 have been reopened. A fire which burned for 12 hours on the Prince of Wales’ station at High River, Alberta, destroyed 12 head of prize cattle. - Thomas Alva Edison was laid to rest after his long life of labour with the reading of the 23rd psalm, a prayer, and the playing of his favourite airs on a violin. A wreath of New Zealand flowers, gathered in April and encased in ice, sent by the Wellington branch of the Navy League, was placed at the foot of the Nelson Column on Trafalgar Day, October 21st. One of the latest practical demonstrations of the Soviet class policy of giving preference to industrial workers was the decision of the Trade Union Council to give not less than 90 percent of all places in rest homes and sanatoria to manual workers, leaving not more than 10 percent for office workers.

More than 1,000,000,000 gallons of petrol were consumed in England last year.

A ladder made of aluminium, weighing only four ounces, was recently exhibited in London.

The number of prisoners in Scotland last year was the lowest since the war.

Illiteracy in London has been reduced from 50 percent to 5 percent of the total population in the last 40 years. It seems almost a judgment that nature has given America a world’s record cotton crop at the very moment when she owns all the gold with which the world could buy it. The Hungarian Government last month ordered all newspapers in Hungary to reduce the number of their pages one-third as part of an economy programme. Last year the Jews in America gave £11,240,174 to Jewish and non-Jewish charities. For meanness the Jew runs neck and neck with the Aberdonian. The. oldest holder of the Victoria Cross, General Sir Reginald Hart, died recently at Bournemouth, aged 83. He gained the cross in the Afghan Campaign in 1879. At an inquest cn an English clergyman who committed suicide because he had lost faith in God, the jury returned a verdict that at the time of his death he was possessed of an evil spirit, and had been of unsound mind at various times in recent months. The “Cheltenham Flyer,” one of England’s fastest trains, travelled from London to Swindon, a distance of 771 miles, in one hour on September 18th. The Great Western Railway Company called it the fastest start-to-stop express run in the world. In the interests of economy, the Prussian Diet was reduced by decree last month by one-third of its membership. Hereafter there will be one representative for every 60,000 voters instead of one for every 40,000 as now. The Bishop of Blackburn was conducting a mission at Blackpool, the popular seaside resort, and visiting a circus there to talk to the performers was invited to have his photograph taken with the lion. He consented, but when the flashlight powder exploded the lion became restive and the bishop did not tarry.

“The greatest compliment one can pay to a book is to put it down and think about it a while,” says Dean Inge. His statement itself seems worth thinking about.

“This hurts me more than it hurts you,” said a magistrate at Dellas, Kansas, when he fined his daughter thirteen dollars for speeding. For he had to put his hand in his pocket and pay the fine himself.

Chinese market gardeners are gradually disappearing from Sydney suburbs, being- squeezed out by white competition in the struggle for Sydney’s vegetable trade of two and a half million pounds.

Canada now owns 42,000 miles of railway—a mileage exceeded only by that of the United States. Canada’s population per mile of railway, 233, is the smallest in the world.

Professor Einstein, in addressing scientists at Vienna last week, said he had proved mathematically that this world began from nothing. It would reach a certain limit of expansion and then the process would be reversed and it would shrink to its original nothingness.

Mahatma Gandhi visited London’s East End and questioned the people in their dingy hovels as to their mode of life. “You’re better off than some of the starving people in India,” he told one widow who lives with six children in a two-room flat, “at least you have food and clothing and a roof over your head. Many of our people have not those things.”