NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13722, 11 April 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

GtrjoussKY taxes all aliens. Over 80,000 beggars exist in Pekiu. ;< China exports 11,000,000 fans a year. Bellows were in tun ewer 2500 Tears ago, In Ireland over 60,000 people speak Irish. Most of the. best cork? come from Algeria, In Paris the first peat office orwn«d in 1492. A single swallow will swallow 6000 f.ie* & day. Ten million oil lamp* arc used nightly in England. A lifeboat cost* about 27s * week to maintain. The bagpipe was invented in Greece 20C year* B.C. There is one horse for every 20 persons in England. In all Rhodesia there ate only 12,5&8 white people. In China any child that is born deformed is put to death, bight-haired people, &* a rule, live longer than dark -Iwired. Ellen Terry first appeared on the *t*g* at the ace of ten. Oysters were a popular article of food in. prehistoric time!*. About 20,000.000 men stand ready for battle in Europe. Dictionaries were used by the Chinese over 3000 vein; ago. ~: Parchment used on the best banjoes in made from wolf skin. Our language contain!* four times as many words as that of Frame. The steam printing pre,** was invented by Richard Hoe in 1842, The first pair of spectacles were made"by Spina, an Italian, in .1239. ;-,'■• Nearly one million miles of territory re i main unexplored in Canada. One hundred and forty bodies were ere ... -■ mated at Woking last year. During 1906, wheat fetched exactly hall ! the price that it did in 1871. I Three thousand marriages are performed ! ever* day all over the world. | The circular saw was devised by BentI bam, an Englishman, in 1790. Bank-notes for about half a cent, each circulate freely in Paraguay. It is customary for our present-day i Emperors to kiss one another. In foriv-eight hoars, ore cholera gems will produce 280.000,000 other*. '■ Eighty-seven per cent, of the Canadian farmers own their own farms. On an average, ten people die every year whilst tunning after omnibuses. Over a thousand patent remedies ' for cholera are sold in the United Suites. A caterpillar devours 6000 times its» own weight in food "during a single mouth. It is calculated that two days' fog pull 25.000 people on the sick list in London. f . Horses arc so plentiful in Buenos -Ayr**.".-. that even the beggars beg on horseback. Seventy-five per cent, of the meat eaten - in England comes from foreign countries. Krupp's great gun works at Essen codsume 2000 tons of coal and coke every day. Men wear 15.000,000 paper collars every year. One firm alone; turns out- 15.000 a day. • ■~'- .'.'_; Through some unaccountable reason ,the; rivers of Russia arc growing shallower each year. . .-....; /^^a^^jJ^-Vc '■:\*i-xirs '■ The longest canal in the world connect! St. Petersburg with Chios ; it is 4472 mile:/ long. ■■:■'"• . , - . * •/* l! the sun were hollow, 300,000 globes the same size as the earth, could' be storei inside. . ,; .. There is not an illiterate pertain in ■ lee:: land, although the population is uwarly 80,000.

Italians applying for work, seize and kin* the hand of the employer. It is an old feudal custom. The condor spends moist of its time snaring in the ratified atmosphere three miles above sea level. * Out of every 10,5000 who go in for teaching as a profession, only 6250 ultimately become teachers. , . The railway "companies of South Australia spend £16,000 a year in removing weed* from their lines. „f In the fourteenth century, soldiers were often deformed by the weight of the armour they had to carry. In Norway vaccination is not compulsory. but you cannot vote at an election tiniest you are vaccinated. The ordinary Indian native is not a moneyed individual. Two pounds is his average annual income. The" women of Greenland denote their fctate —maid, wife or widowby the colour of their hair ribbons. " Barometer Tree*" arc smooth and white hi fine weather, but they turn black when a, storm is threatening. The newest billiard nails are made of cast steel. They are the same weight as ivory. and cost about 8s each. Antiquarians sav that .Solomon's* Tempi* was 107 ft long. Soft wide, and 54ft high, with a portico 56ft long. Every Danish subject, criminals and .paupers excepted, has the right to an old-agft pension at the age of 60. r /- ; Rubies of true pigeon-blood colour arc so rare that thev are worth ten tim<w their weight in diamonds. " The salmon is, l>>" short distances, the swiftest swimmer of any fish, it can travel at a rate of 25 mile? an hour. The number of deaths thai occur 'on the globe amount to 67 a minute, and the births to about 69 or 70 a minute. In India a sacred fire is still burning, which watt lighted over twelve centuries ago; it is fed five time a day. - Soon after th> birth of a child in China, a red cord is tied round its wrist, to ensure obedience to it" parents. Someone has discovered that clay-pipe stems when heated give, the hair a softer and more natural curl than irons. A recently captured whale had in its fide a harpoon "which belonged to a ship that ' sailed for the last, time 50 years ago. Cholera has not been epidemic in England since the year 1866, when it appeared in both London and Liverpool, One of the deadliest poisons known to botanists is the common daphne, one berry of which has killed a child in less than 20 minutes. When Queen Elizabeth became old she had all mirrors banish-d from the palace, so that she could not see the wrinkles in her face. The Home dockyard* employ abous 27,000 men. The Government has established a forty-eight hour week all the I year round. Powder mills are now being built with bricks made from , la >ter of Paris and cork, because of the slight resistance they offer in case of explosion. Sleeping in tight-laced corsets was once the custom of English ladies, uirls with stooping shoulders" had a flat piece of board bound upon their backs to keep thchshoulders straight. It is stated on German authority that the astounding number of two million glass eyes are made every year in Germany and Switzerland, while* one French house manufac- x res three hundred thousand of them annually. Hart Morasen, chick" of the agricultural division of the United States Census Office, reports unofficially from Indian, Ter- * ritory that the sun is so hot that. it has i popped a field of popcorn on the cob and i hatched chickens out of crates of fresh Usgs- ,