How the World Wags

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 6, 13 November 1931, Page 7

How the World Wags

The population of the Japanese Empire is estimated at 90,000,000. There has been a drop of 100,000 in the British unemployed figures in the last four weeks. Seven hundred thousand miles of the total highway mileage of 3,030,000 in the United States is now surfaced. About 20 percent of the licensed airpilots in Great Britain are now women. Non-voting citizens in Peru are barred from holding public office, signing legal documents, and obtaining passport and other privileges. The French Cabinet has approved an appropriation of £30,000,000 for the relief of unemployment. The Confederation Generale du Travail estimates that more than 1,000,000 people are unemployed in the country. Bricks dating back to the reign of King Ashurnasirpal, over 3500 years ago, were recently used in the construction of a railroad station at Tell Billah on the Khornsabad railroad in Mesopotamia. The first aeroplane baby made his appearance last September a boy. A pilot received a hurry-up call from the country to take a patient to the maternity hospital at The Pas, New York, but half way on the journey the baby arrived, at a height of 4000 feet. Dr. Edwin Hubble, of Mount Wilson Observatory, as a result of his studies of photographs of the heavens, has expressed the opinion that there are 30,000,000 nebulae and that they are spaced at exact intervals 1,500,000 light years apart. The Geneva correspondent of “The Times” states that 35 States out of 64 which will take part on the World Disarmament Conference have replied regarding the armaments truce. New Zealand is among the majority which agree, with certain reservations. A Moslem whose identity has not been established committed suicide in a sensational way at the Bombay Zoological Gardens. He climbed a tree and leapt into the tigers’ enclosure, where he was immediately torn to pieces. It is estimated that within the past five or six weeks, as the result of intense dumping of foreign goods, in order to forestall tariffs, Britain has paid out between £3,000,000 and £4,000,000 a week above the normal payments for European manufactures, says the London “Daily Telegraph.” At a building exhibition in Berlin one hundred five-room copper houses were sold during the first five days. The walls are two inches thick, with copper on the outside and pressed steel on the inside, and doors and windows built in. It is claimed that the houses can be delivered and set up ready for occupancy in two days, provided foundations are ready.

The members of the South African rugby football team now touring Britain were received by the King at Buckingham Palace last week. At a joint convention in Seattle, Washington, 6,670 churches of the Congregational and Christian denominations were united, and they will take the name of the “Congregational and Christian Church.” With the killing of some five million rats in six months the bubonic plague has been stamped out in Peru. Seventy tons of arsenic were used, temptingly mixed with grated cheese, ground salt fish, ground pressed seal cake, dried shrimps and wheat flour, which was evidently just what the rats wanted. The State of Maryland put a tax on road signs which appears not to have had much effect in raising a considerable amount of revenue ; but, judging •from the fact that the State’s roads commission tore down no fewer than 15,250 signs in two days, the law certainly helped greatly to beautify the landscape.

Lord Rothermere is said to have won £IOO,OOO betting on the British elections. The man who could win that here would be a genius.

The Agricultural Order of Merit is prized by French farmers. To obtain it, one must have been actively engaged in agriculture for at leaast fifteen years. When it was founded by Jules Meline, Minister of Agriculture, in 1884, it met with a great deal of ridicule. But its present popularity may be judged from this year’s “promotion,” which comprises 406 officers and 2436 knights in France and 28 officers and 196 knights in Algeria and the colonies. The recognition

which membership in the order accords is eagerly sought after, and many a farmer is proud to wear the green ribbon in his buttonhole. Australia, as well as New Zealand, has notified the League of Nations that she has accepted the armaments holiday. Talking love-letters are the latest fad of youths and girls in New York. For a shilling in the slot one may enter a booth, speak in a microphone for a minute and a half, walk out with a gramophone record of the message ending many times with a sound like a kiss and post it on the spot. For 2/ one may talk for twice as long, and for 4/ for five minutes.