NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17889, 17 September 1921, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The coast-line of England is 2200 miles long. A total of 39 minor planets was discovered in 1920. One firm in Britain produces 200.000,000 bottles per annum, A square foot of honeycomb contains more than 9000 cells. Divorce suits in Britain increased from 1267 in 1913 to 5763 in 1919. No rain has fallen at the oases of Kufr*., in the Sahara, for eight years. A? a sale of jewels atr Christie's, London, JBISjOOO was obtained in ten minutes, Certain forms of seaweed contain as much as 48 per cent, of sugar. Slang is claimed as the language pi the future by an American professor. The mortality from -consomption to-day is one one-tenth of what it was 50 years ago. More than 400 towels were stolen from one London baths in a recent twelve months. Aeroplanes, minus whips and engines, sold for three shillings each at a, sale at Lincoln. The milk bill of the London Hospital has risen from £5000 before the war to £16,000 now. The various currents in the North Sea. are now being tracked by means of sealed bottles. The average daily consumption of water in London is 35 gallons per head of the population. Claiming to be the largest " family" in the towld, Dr. Baraardo's Homes? hold" 7200 children. Pianos made in Britain in 1913 numbered 120,000; last year the . number madij was only 50,000. Two ladies recently passed this examination of the British Auctioneers aud Estate Agents' Institute. Separate accommodation is now provided in the audiences for men and women in Madrid picture theatres, ■. During the last 300 years there have been more changes in hat fashions than in any other part of men's attire, A witness in the Bow County Court, London, had his bald head tattooed with stars, birds, a stag, and other animals.. Earthquakes occur* in Great Britain once a month,, on an average, but only one in every 200 causes any damage. Trench maps, which were printed for military use on strong canvas, are row being used to maka inner soles for tennis shoes. Built of concrete in the middle of a lake, a huge relief map of the world Is used to teach geography in a Califomian school. Blood tests are now suggested as a means of finding out whether people are engaged in work suited to their health and temperament. Brass sis and Antwerp are to be connected by an electric railway. The trains will cover the 29 miles between the two cities in 32 minutes. f | £ One South. London picture-theatre now i ias a special mothers' matinee, when : babies in prgms may be left in tie ears . of an official attendant. The radius of human right, under perfect conditions, is averaged at 45 miles from the top os Mount Everest ten canes 3 this distance would be visible, * The 0.8. E. has been given to a Lon- ,- don chimney-sweep, who, while acting as . a special constable, was instrumental in saving a runaway observation balloon. Worked by one man, a two-masted schooner recently brought a cargo of copper ore across the North Sea from Hazn- : burg to Hull; the voyage took five days, } The famous " Hindehburg" wooden . statue, which was to be covered by ad- .. mirers with nails at a small charge each, was recently advertised for sale as firs- , wood. s Usees of the " wireless" telephone will ' only know that they are using this new i invention by the absence of the humming ; of the wire, making the voices much • clearer. 1 The "no stocking" fad of fashionable 1 Parisian ladies recently received a big 1 check at a race meeting, when the tem--1 perature dropped suddenly and they felt 1 the cold. An aeroplane railway, where the i machine is attached to a fixed cable, is '. to be installed between Nice on the ', coast and Peira Sava, 4600 feet above , sea level. King George was born at Marlborough House and Queen Mary at Kensington Palace; they are believed to be the first pair of Londoners by birth to share 1 the throne. ' A blackbird's nest with five eggs, teats on the axle box of a > railway fish waggon, completed a journey of more than 900 ' miles, from Aberdeen to London and hack, without damage. l The 'French Government has presented to the Chamber a Bill authorising a 3ub- , side of 40 J OOO,OOO francs (about £850,000) i for the organisation of the Olympic Games 5 in Paris in 1924. f Prussia's potash deposits are estimated j to contain salts equivalent to 2,000,000,000 ' metrio tons of potash, enough to supply, - the world for 2000 years at the present " rate of consumption. 3 Olympic games for Chinese, Japanese^ ' and Filipinos have been held at Shanghai, i where 1000 fine athletic Chinese sclsooi--3 girls competed, a remarkable contrast to t the old foot-binding days. % A Danish archaeological expedition lufc gone to Greenland in the hope of finding relics of the old Vikings. The rains of a Viking church and a Viking burial- - place have already been found. The old war-time British bakeries at a Eouen, extending over an area of about a -{ 60,000 yards, which had been bought by a the French Ministry for the Liberated, a Regions, have been destroyed by fire. Music of all kinds being harmful to morality, in his opinion, the Mayor of .' Noeux-les-Mines, Pas de Calais, France, 8 has ordered the suppression of all pianos >r and gramaphones in his commune. 3 A member of the Japanese House of If Representatives has protested against the Es slowness of express trains in Japan. Ha ie says that even a special express cannoS >f travel at more than 30 miles an hour in d Japan. b- A new Belgian amphibious boat has »- been invented to shoot the Congo rapids. When the rapids are reached, the boat hitches on to an overhead rail and shoots the rapids, suspended in the air, afterward; " a taking the water. % A cockroach which climbed into a telev graphic instrument in a signal box on the n Canadian National Railway so irtarfered Is with its working that the operator could tt not get a message through and a train ~ was held up for 20 minutes. e The Italian grape crop in 1920 exceeded ie the average of the preceding 10 years, c- amounting to 223,800 tons, and the produc■s tion of wine amounted to 42,294,000 hecto- >- litres, against 35,002,000 in 1919. The e prospects for the next crop are very favour's able.

It is curious to note how deaf-mutism varies in different countries. In Switzerland, for instance, owing to the prevalence of cretinisny, 245 per 100,000 of the inhabitants suffer from it, whereas the general average among European countries is 79. and in the United States 68, per 100,000. The use of oil as fuel is becoming more and more important to industry, sna it is interesting to note that .the output of petroleum is increasing sapidly. In 1920 the world's production of oil was over 688,000,000 barrels, nearly a quarter ss much again as in. 1919. The largest proportion of oil came from the United States,, the next from Mexico, and the smaiksjk. from Italy,.