PICKINGS AND POINTS

Northland Age, Volume 8, Issue 2, 12 October 1938, Page 12

PICKINGS AND POINTS

The average cost per pupil in English elementary schools is £9 10/11 a year.

A school where young butchers, bakers, chefs and pastrycooks will be taught their trades is to be built in Melbourne.

A Fascist who disturbed a Peace Council meeting in London by singing the National Anthem was fined £1 for insulting behaviour.

On his 87th birthday recently, Sir Daniel Stevenson, ex-Lord Provost of Glasgow, worked as usual in his coal export business.

Instruction in nutrition now given to girls studying domestic science, is to be extended to all girls in South Australian schools. ☆ ☆ ☆ The award of a contract for the building of cantonments at Acre at a cost of £250,000 was a first step in increasing the military forces in Palestine. ☆ ☆ ☆ Savings bank deposits have reached a record level this year, the amount to the credit of depositors at March 31 being £76,486,000, or £64 14/- per depositor. ☆ ☆ ☆ A 13-months-old child in South Australia gave the alarm when a stray ferret attacked her two-months old sister. The baby was badly bitten on the arms, cheek and forehead. ☆ ☆ ☆ Catholic schools in Austria have been closed and education will henceforth be exclusively State-controlled, and the teaching of “race-science” compulsory. ☆ ☆ ☆ A Scottish savant wrote to the “Times” giving as an illustration of the evils of examinations the case of a child of 13 who was requested to write an essay on “The Great Achievement of the Human Mind is the Idea of Justice.” ☆ ☆ ☆ In 1930 Australia had 74,578 incapacitated ex-soldiers, and in 1937, despite deaths and cancellations, the tally of soldier pensioners increased from 74,578 to 77,076. Theie are still 150,000 ex-service men who have not as yet applied for medical or pension benefits. ☆ ☆ ☆ The Colombo Museum of Ceylon has received a collection of costly coconut-shell cups, which illustrates that the shell of the coconut has been used for making precious ornamental cups in Europe in the Middle Ages, when it was believed that liquids drank from them acquired medicinal properties. One of the vessels is a rare Elizabethan jug, carved with three scenes from the Bible, and mounted in finely engraved silver.

As one item in British anti-air-raid equipment, Sir Samuel Hoare states that 275,000,000 sandbags are on order. ☆ ☆ ☆ The Norway pine was not originally a native of Norway, its first home was in the north-eastern United States. V V V The will of Samuel Insull, the notorious American financier, whose fortune was once estimated as greater than that of Rockefeller, shows that he left £2OO in cash and £2,800,000 in debts. ☆ ☆ ☆ What is claimed to be a world record for big fish caught by rod is claimed by the South Australia Game Fishing Club, which recently awarded one of its members, Mr. G. R. Cowell, a trophy for his capture of a 10231 b white pointer shark at Dangerous Reef, off Port Lincoln, in April. ☆ ☆ ☆ A French judge, from statistics kept over a long period of years, declares emphatically that bad dancers make good husbands. In divorce cases the husbands with the most undesirable characteristics from a family point of view were invariably good dancers while bad dancers were rarely brought to the divorce court. ☆ ☆ ☆ Since the beginning of the war in Spain, Franco has made over 50 deliberate attacks on British shipping. Up to the end of June 13 British ships have been sunk, 35 British sailors killed and nearly 50 wounded. ☆ ☆ ☆ Sir George Paish, former Adviser to the British Treasury, says: “The efforts of the nations to be self-sup-porting will bring disaster beyond anything the world has seen. The world machine is stopping, and may be at a complete standstill in 1939, if not in 1940. My hope rests with Washington rather than with White-

In a village in Wales there is a family in which six brothers and sisters, all over 70, are receiving old age pensions. V V V While totalisator “investments” are going up they are still 10 per cent below the 1926-30 average level, and the rate of increase is tapering off. PATHOS (“Young girls take great trouble to imitate the film stars, and are consequently irritated by the lack of colour and romance in the average young man.”—Extract from article.) I ape the gait of Garbo, Like Dietrich I have sung, I’m sure my eyes are just the size Of sweet Loretta Young. I dance like Ginger Rogers, The sheen of stars is mine. A Myrna Loy, who’s got a boy Who looks like Frankenstein!