NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13396, 26 January 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Jin. Tibetan week his only live days. Australian mines employ 120,000 men. The average life of a banknote is id

i days. Birmingham produces 220,000,000 nibs j weekly. ' The Pyramid of Cheops contains 4,000.000 | tons of stone. Since 1845 England has been engaged in ! nearly 50 wars. The English language lias more words ; tlinn am othc\ There are 50,000 acres under cocoauul palms in LVylon. | Slate billiard tallies were first used in Holland in 1827. j Russia's death rate i- 11 per 1000. the i highest in Europe. The average (it/in. in peasant family i spcuos £156 yearly. ; The total nobility of the United KingI dom is just over 750. I Seventy thousand people use the ferry- ; boats of Paris daily. I It takes 400 tons of beetroot to give from ! 26 to 30 tons of sugar. I In 1882 Mr. Hazel walked 660 miles in | &ix days at New York. J The 'lurks closed the Black Sea to foreign shipping in 1453. British lifeboats have saved £50 lives yearly since the year 1824. Coats of arms were first commonly worn in France about 1190 A.D. House tax is higher in Rome than in any other European town. Tlie Nassau Ban?, of New York lias a safe 40ft long and 20ft wide. The, new sea-going destroyers are of 790 Urns, and cost £143.000 each. The average income of English people is £38. of Scottish people £45. In 23 years' Atlantic steaming the Britannic burnt 510,000 tons of coal. The world's railway engines cover an aggregate of 7.000.000 miles a day. Seventy per cent, of all gold in the possession of man is in the shape of coil). Washington, capital of the United Stales, I has experienced a cold of 27deg, below zero. | The first lifeboat was wrecked in 1&50, ! while rescuing the crew of the brig Ulal- : ton. j Billiards comes from the French word " billard," meaning a stick with a curved ■ ! end. The copyright of " Kathleen Mavovneeti," composed by Crouch, was sold for £400. In 1460 the taxation of France was fourpence a head. It is now over £3 10s a head. The amount of cheese produced yearly bv a good cow in Canada is estimated ai £7 1 j worth. ! Throe hundred and forty million gallons 1 of water goes over Niagara Falls every 1 ' minute. • I Stockholm, Christiana, Berlin, a.nd Lon- ! don are the most healthy of European • '■ capitals. ! In the United Kingdom 200 out of every 1 ' million persons are employed as writers L ; or editors. . I Australia holds the record as wool-pro- . ducer; the. Argentine is second, and United States third. Fully four million gallons of gum arc > needed for the postage stamps made in I England in a year. ~.,.. J Queen Anne, wife, of Richard 111., is " said to have introduced the side-saddle for ladies into England. r The population of Bombay Presidency 1 iias increased -by no fewer than 15,000,000 . in the past '6<J years. ' " I'm guilty of not stealing that coat," was the, plea of a tramp who was charged at Yarmouth with theft. I Lieutenant Sayce crossed the English % Channel to France in a collapsible boat which was only B|ft long. i In 1840 Mr. J. Smith, of Leeds, made , an electric clock which ran without fur- . ther attention for fifty years. ' By 150 votes to 107 the French Senate ! has decided that M. Emile Zola's remains 1 should be transferred to the Pantheon. , The fourth wife of the Sultan Abdul Med - jid. who was the stepmother of the present . Sultan of Turkey, has died of pneumonia. 1 Some years ago a turtle was killed in the West Indies 7ft long and 15ft in dia--1 meter. It weighed a little short of a ton. 1 y The Black Watch was originally composed of armed companies of loyal clans, , who policed the Highlands from 1725 to 1 1/A9. On an average 60 per cent, of peopleover ten years old are -working for their living. This is the rule for all civilised countries. In 1557 surgeons were first regularly appointed for the Ordnance Service, and after that they always accompanied the trades in the Held. The tax on newspapers was abolished in 1854. At that date the total combined circulation of all British newspapers was under 500,000 a day. Queen Victoria Eugenic of Spain has ordered that during the rigours of the winter season 1000 rations are to be given daily to the poor at her expense. Bookselling is the most healthy trade. A bookseller loses, on an average, only 4], days yearly by illness, while a, mason or a miller loses nine days. No live animals except bees will be carried by post between Great Britain and Nicaragua, according to a parcel post agreement just concluded between the two

j countries. ' The Pope has appointed as his private | physician Dr. Giuseppe Petacci, and as his I consulting physician Dr. Ettora Marchia- ; fava, professor of pathology at the Univer- , sity of Home. | In September, 1789, the. ship Adventure | was lost, in the mouth of the Tyne with j all her crew, before thousands of speci tators. This led to the invention of i Greathead's lifeboat. • j One of the Kaiser's favourite dishes,. the American Review of Reviews says, is German beefsteak with mashed potatoes. The usual menu at the Imperial table consists I of soup, fish, meat, vegetables, and cheese. I The wine, either from the Rhine or the I Mfosel, is always served in unla-belled and open bottles. Julius Lindauer, a German brewery worker, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, who committed suicide recently, leaving £620, directed that £220 be spent in cremating his body, and that the other £400 be spent in buying drinks for the members of the Brewery Workers' Union, who are. requested to drink his health at the funeral. "Married people's handwriting often grows to be so much alike that you cannot tell the husband's from the' wife's," said a woman at the South County Court in trying to explain the similarity between an order which she said was written by her husband and a receipt written by herself. The judge refused to accept her theory. A woman's experiment in farming is about to be attempted in Texas under the leadership of Miss Marv Haydou. a novelist of Chicago. She has* purchased 5000 acres oi farming land in the Lone Star State for Um» purpose of founding a women's colony. M "* Ilaydon and her associates, a. of whom are unmarried ladies, are going in for light tarn " inc. and invite women with small capital, or "useful" women without capital, to join them Women may have their husbands accompany them '* '*■ is absolutely unavoidable, but no men will have any voice in the management of the colony. - :