NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17145, 26 April 1919, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Snow does not alleviate thirst. Visiting cards were first used in France. There are 500,000 farmers in Great Bri,ain. Philadelphia has a street ma<Jo with sompressed grass. £100,000 are given a way to beggar*-in L ndon every year. Germany is said to ha\e abolished the tipping system in her resUunuitb. The cotton manufacture of Lancashire is the largest industry in the world. The greatest gold minea in the world ire the Rand mines in Ikruth Africa, During the war the naval personnel has grown from 120,000 to eome 500,000. About 5,000,000 ounces of platinum have come- upon the market since it began L>4» mined. Horses, giraffes and ostriches haw the largest eyes of any members of the aLimal kingdom. The peaco treaty ending the FrancoPrassian war of 1870 comprised but ten clauses, or articles. The rat population of Great Britain cm January 1 last, was 40,000,000— rat to every human being. When the armistice was signed there were about 40,000 " Wanes " (Women's Army Auxiliary Corps). The ex-Kaiser possessed abort forty palaces, and had fourteen estates scattered through seven provinces. New York has 300 first and second-class hotels, with a total of over 100,000 bedrooms and 100,000 employees. In 1917 over 45,000 tons of paper hi Germany was converted into paper yams and woven into fabrics of ail kinds. Glasgow has now supplanted Birmingham in the honour of heme; the second larger city of the United Kingdom. Roughly, the world's Catholics number 264,000,000. the Protestants 166,000,000. Buddhists and Confucians number 421,000, 000. In the English General Election 151 candidates paid £22,650 in fines for failing to obtain one-eighth of the votes recorded. Physicians of other days always insisted that " bleedings " should be made in odd numbers— three, five, etc., and never an even one. Two Aberdeen Angus bulls at Perth, Scotland, recently realised £2940 each, which is said to be a world's record price for this breed. Whale meat appeared on bUlfl of fare in Eiropean countries and in America during c-he war, and in Japan it has been a food for hundreds of years. The largest airship in the world is to be launched shorUv. She is E33, Britain's reply to the super-Zeppelins, and was built in secret to Admiralty design. Men who work in blast furnaces are singularly free from influenza, a fact for which the medical profession has been unable to determine the reason. During the war nearly 14,000,000 publications representing a monetary value of Bomethini' like £300,000 were sent by tho public of Great Britain to the troops. In the United Kingdom there, are-be-tween 23.000 and 24,000 miles of raihraya, and, taking them all round, they are probably the best-built lines in the world. The flag of Ecuador is the whitest of all national flags. It is made up of two white bars with, between them, a stripe of blue on which there are white stars. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is 179 ft high, and is out of the perpendicular by 16ift. This is one foot more out of perpendicular than it was at a previous measurement in 1829. The year 1919 marks the semi-centennial of the completion and firnial opening of the Suez canal, which still ranks as one of the greatest engineering projects of the world. The world-famous " Passion Play," held every decade at Oberanunergau, Bavaria, was originated in the seventeenth centaury, in tho h'»po of allying a plague then raging throughout the country. Grape vinos at Xippen, Stirlingslrrro, last year bore 1558 bunches of grapes, which were sold for £367. The fortunate owner's out-of-pocket expenses for the year amounted to under £3. The home of Evangeline at Grand-Pre, N.S., immortalised by Longfellow's Doom of that name, has been bought by the Canadian Pacific Railway and will be maintained as a public park. To construct a great highway after the Roman method would cost to-day at least) £150) a chain, .£120,000 a mile. So thoroughly were these roadß built that they lasted for hundreds and hundreds of' years. The most remarkable crossing of the English Channel was made in 1883 by a Mr. Terry, who cycled over to France! The machine was installed in » speciallybuilt boat, the pedals working a set of paddle-wheels, Same Swiss Presidents have carried disregard for etiquette to an extreme. _ A story is told of a distinguished Englishman who visited the Presidential office and was received by the head of the republic in his shirt-sleeves. According to the 1916 census, New York's population was 5,602,841. This exceeds the population of the County of London, given in the 1911 census as 4,521,685, but the population of Greater London is—or wa5—7,251,358. Within 4000 ft of the surface there is j 197,000,000,000 tons oi coal in Great Britain. If 15 per cent, be deducted for wastage, this quantity represent* a supply which, at the present rate of consumption and export, would last 580 years. The former German Emperor owned hundreds of paintings, coming from the I brashes of the world's greatest masters, I Included in his co'lection ere no fewer j than nineteen undoubtedly genuine wor.es I by Rubens, acknowledged as the greatest of Flemish painters. Marshal Foch owns the prized souvenir of the great war—a little piece of pink blotting paper. When tho blotting paper is held before a mirror <"•!> ran see the date, "11 November, 1913, and underneath the names of the allied aid German delegates who signed the armistice. No human foot has ever trod the summit of Mount Everest, which rise? to » ' height of 30,000 feet, and is the eolamv ,ating point of the earth. Probably » I will bo reached by flight in the early ' future when some enterprising airman ! wishes to do a -stunt" winch vrnl make I his name famous everywhere, i The League of N atiou flag was obtained hv taking one of the flags in the In*r ! national Code-which la the universal lan ; ! ™ of the sea-and reversing the col I nurs "T " in the code cons.ete of three ' bS horizontal stripes, blueoute.de, and J the middle white. The League flag has i IS, whiU'stripes on either side of a blue one. . \ bos of cigarettes and rourpenco-Dall- ; penny was »« lhal rewarded some burpC who recently broke into a theatre at Aldershot, England. Even this, however, £not a record for smaLlnes, Burglar *ho, some time back, blew open the church safe at St. Michael's Lichfield, after working at it all night, found therein but one solitary half-penny, the valuable plate it ordinarily contained having been removed elsewhere. \ curious story is told concerning Charles Bernadotte, who, beginning cs a French revolutionary, finished his career as King of fewed'-n. » was always a ruzz'.e to those most mtinwWv jiwic' sited with him that he would never show himself with bared P.rms. After his death, however, the mystery was solved. On the Km-' risht forearm were tatowd v»r..u» "souvenirs of I-'* young rn»bican" days, including the red cap of Liberty and the motto, " Death to luu<j6.