NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17294, 18 October 1919, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The human body has 240 bones. Middle names were once illegal in England. A hand, in horse measurement, is four inches. Cabbages and carrots were unknown before 1547. The first film play ever shown was only about 40ft in length. Beer, ales, etc., were first excised by Parliament in 1643. The Persians have a different name for every day in the month. As a rule, the nails on the right hand grow faster than those on the left. Pigeons have been known to fly 600 miles in continuous flight in 10 hours. The height of St. Paul's Cathedral L as many feet as there are days in the year. Only 300 Japanese soldiers were killed during the war, although 300,000 men were mobilised. Japan has a shipbuilding yard still in operation which was established over 1900 years ago. In a certain section of Persia there is a race of pigmy camels sft in height and snuw-white in colour. Russian law forbids people to marry more than five times, or to contract a marriage after the age of 80. A new " baby" aeroplane, of Swedish make, weighs only 700 pounds, and has a speed of 80 miles an hour. 'The average number of persons per acre living in Kensington is 75, in Hammersmith 53, and in Westminster 64. Bankruptcies are almost unknown in China, probably owing to the fact that they entail immediate execution. In Sweden the public-houses are closed on Saturday—pay-day— the savings banks are kept open until midnight. Before the war the number of people holding British Government securities was 340,000; to-day it is well over 20.000,000. The largest yield of bone from a single whale was taken in 1883. It amounted to 31101b, which was at that time worth £3125. One hundred thousand Japanese are now living in the United States; all but five thousand of them in the Rocky Moun- ; tain and Pacific coast districts. As a means of preventing small boys , from " hanging on" automobiles, an in- . ventor has fitted up a contrivance which , gives an electric shock to any delinquent. Mr. John Hobden, of Warbleton Priory, , Sussex, recently captained a team con- ! sisting of himself, nine sons, and a son- ' in-law. in a match against the local cricket s club. ) Mr. Lloyd George signed the Peace ' Treaty with a pen made of gold, bearing an inscription in Welsh. The pen was the ' gift of Mr. R. Morris, M.P. for North Bat--1 tersea. On the North-western Railway alone > more than 17,000 signals are lit every . night, and a driver working from London 5 to Crewe and back is controlled by nearly 600 signals. i Of the 5,700,000,000 packets which pass i annually through the post offices of the 3 United Kingdom. 33,000,000 cannot be de- . livered because they are insufficiently or i incorrectly addressed. Upwards of 650 tons of soot fall annually on each square mile of the City of London; that is to say, during one year i 76,050 tons fall on the 117 square miles ,f which form the administrative county, s The earliest submarine boat chronicled i- was that constructed in 1620 by the Dutch i, natural philosopher, Cornelius van Dreb- '• bel. They were wooden, and were ren- ■ t 'dered watertight by greased leather a stretched over the hull. In one of them e James L of England made a lengthy trip.

Thirteen thousand guineas has been paid for a pair of Persian carpets left to the Marchioness of Graham by her father. The carpets, measuring 13ft by sft 9in, are woven of silk, wool, and camel's hair, in exquisite coloured arabesque designs, with pink and purple panels on a ground of gold and silver thread. It is not generally known that the Canadian Government is the owner of the ■world's largest buffalo herd. It totals 3142 bead, and they are congregated in Buffalo National Park, an immense reservation, 165 square miles in area, at Wainwright. in the prairie province of Alberta. This vast park is entirely enclosed with a strong wire fence. A lady in America cherishes an old Bible, which an ancestress baked in a loaf of bread when a house-to-house search was going to be made for stray copies of the Scriptures. The soldiers came to search the house, but it is not a matter of wonder that they failed to find tie book, which now, looking pretty old, is the American lady's chief treasure. Men who toil in lampblack works are owing, it is said, to the large amount of carbon they —likewise immune from the white plague, and many sufferers in the early stages of phthisis make considerable sacrifices to obtain employment of this kind. These grimy workers further resemble colliers in that they are remark, ably free from diseases of the nervous system. Few people know that the British have a sunken fleet nearly half as large again as the German fleet that lies beneath the waves at Scapa Flow. In 1693 an English merchant fleet of 400 sail was being convoyed to the Mediterranean by 23 English and Dutch men-of-war, when they were attacked by 71 French ships. No less than 90 of our vessels went down, but Admiral Rooke by brilliant manoeuvring brought the others away in safety. The "Florentine" or "Grand Duke." a diamond of 139 carats, valued at £160,000, was picked up by the roadside after th« battle of Granson in 1476. Its finder, thinking it was a worthless piece of glass, promptly flung it away; but on second thoughts picked it up again, and was glad to part with it for a franc to a priest, who, in turn, was delighted to dispose of it at. a profit of a hundred per cent., one two-millionth part of its value. The Bible was originally one continuoui piece of text. Its division into lines to suit the sense was done by Euthalius, of Alexandria-, in the last half of the fifth century. Its division Into chapters is ascribed to two archbishops. Lanfranc in the eleventh century and Lsngton in the thirteenth, and a cardinal, Hugo de Sancto Caro, about 1250. Rabbi Nathan the division of the Bible into sections about 1445, and another Hebrew, Athras, completed the work in 1661. An English printer, Robert- Stephens, introduced the present division into verses in 1551. That one should find sweet blossoms in the ice-bound, dreary wastes of the North Pole, seems incredible. It is, nevertheless, a fact that there the explorer lias found many thousands of acres of buttercups, heather, bluebells, dandelions, and rhododendrons. A botanist has collected 125 species of plants and flowers on the roof of the world. Even large, delicious mushrooms are there, while orange coloured lichens are in abundance. And, strange to say, all, with but a single exception, are perfectly odourless. Thousands and thousands of acres of flowers, and yet no perfume. Yon. may have wondered" sometimes why the village smithy is such a dark building, its allowance of window light being fearfully small. The reason for this is not economy of glass, but for the special purpose of the smith's work. Too much light upon the pieces of white-hot iron or steel is not desirable for two reasons; one is that the " heat" cannot be seen properly in & strong light. The other is that in the course of " tempering" tools, gjch as picks chisels, drills, etc., the I smith has to judge by the colours, as the tool cools down from the white heat, exckctly when to dip them in the waterI bath, and these colours can co.lv. fee see&