ITEMS OF GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17483, 29 May 1920, Page 2 (Supplement)

ITEMS OF GENERAL NEWS.

GOLD AMID THE RUINS. Some Italian workmen, employed to cleav- away ruins near Verdun, have disappeared, taking with them 10,000 Wanes in gold, which they found in a safe among the debris. ■ A MINISTRY OP SPORT. A' French Government Commission, appointed to. consider the best methods of developing sport, ' advocates '"a national office of sport under the Ministry of War. The object is to improve national physique. , . Sport has received a tremendous impetus in France since the war, due in no small measure to tho popularity of Georges Carpentier, the boxer. JACKDAW " GHOST." During a social gathering in a church room at Campbeltown, Argylo, mysterious tappings were heard behind the panelling of the vestibule. The noise was found to be tho pecking of a jackdaw trying to escape. When freed tho bird was seen to bo weak and emaciated. It was given feed and ate so ravenously that in a few minutes it rolled over dead. FIGHT WITH RATS. At an inquest at) Coventry on Priscilla Brown,- a widow, who had lived alone for 25 years, it was stated that she had probably died of shock while fighting rats, which Had bitten her. She was found dead in bed with peculiar wounds on her arm. The body was left in the house, which was infested with rats, and next day more wounds of a similar character were found. END OF THE WORLD. The scientific writer, M. Charles Nordmahn, basing his opinion on the latest researches, says in an article in the Matin that tho end of the world,, will not come for 10,000,000,000 years. Helmhotz and Henri Poincaro estimated that the sun would have burned itself out within eight million years, but the recent discovery that the solar mass contains immense deposits of radium means that the duration of the sun's heat is multiplied almost indefinitely.