GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18297, 13 January 1923, Page 6 (Supplement)

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

■; RATS CAUSE A TRAGEDY. Lydia de Rue, a young jersey domestic: servant, was found dead in bed. A gaspipe was leaking in a downstairs room. Apparently it had been gnawed by. rats, with the consequence that gas entered th« girl's bedroom and poisoned her while slits 3lept. RLTND "HELLO" GEtL. Miss Susie Davis, a blind girl, of Virginia City, California, is the star operator of the telephone exchange. She is also a champion whisfc player, using bar own pack of cards, which, she admits, are marked. She declares that blind people have tha most sensitive "telephone ears." SAVED BY A TAIL. Rex, an Airdale terrier owned by Miss Lilian Norstall, of San Francisco, in. credited with saving his mistress' life when, while bathing in the surf at Long Beach, she was overcome with cramp. The dog, seeming to see or sens® her distress, swam close to Miss Norstall. She grasped his stump of a tail, and he took her safely ashore. I HER FIRST TRAIN RDSE. Loud cries were heard in a London and South Western train from Exeter to Plymouth, and a middle-aged woman was found in a compartment leaning out of tho window in a state of much agitation. When she had been calmed down she explained it was her first railway ride and being alone she became nervous. She continued her journey with another woman passenger. OVERCOATS INSURED. Overcoat insurance has been perfected by a Fire Insurance Company in "Chicago. A new form of policy has been devised to indemnify the overcoat purchaser against direct loss, by burglary, theft, larceny, or robbery. The secretary of the company says the policy is the-first of its kind, and that its possibilities for use by hotels, restaurants, retail shops, ana diners-out are unlimited. . • HON TRAPPED IN A TOWN. For some time past a party of lions have been systematically raiding Dar-es-Salaam, the capital of Tanganyika Territory, and stealing native stock. The raids became so frequent that the veterinary department finally set traps, with the result that they caught a full-grown black-maned lion just off one of the main streets of the town. The body was placed on view in the market place, much to the delight of the native population.

. DEATH AT 117. The death, is anotmced of Henry Lorenz, aged 117, at Pleasantdale, Northern Saskatchewan! According to family records, Lorenz was born in Austria on May 9, 1805, the year of -the Battle of Trafalgar. Three children, nine grandchildren, and fifty-two great-grandchildren .survive him. The centenarian up. to a year ago was a heavy smoker, but the increased price of tobacco caused him to stop. He did thework on his farm until a few days before his death. . FOND OP WORK. .'■-, Ralph Warner, aged eighteen, an engineer, of Detroit, is spending sixteen' hours a week in college * and working, .in a factory eleven hours each- night 1 to pay his ■way. Warner has asked to be excused, from "gym." required;-.bf all;students, at the University of Michigan, Warner said he had no time for tins work. He works as an engineer . from 5,30 each 'evening until 4.30 a.m. He attends classes at 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. four days a ■week, and then hurries into his overalls to return to his engineer's bench.J k GOLF BALL LANDS IN NEST. 1 Playing over the West Middlesex course at Soutjiall, Sir Emsley Car? sliced his • teo shot at the twelfth hole, the ball being found afterwards ilu a ; blackbird's neat. He was taking part in : a three-ball match with Mir. Harry Roucttee, the well-known artist, and the club professional, .0. Mcllvenny. The incident was peculiarly, applicable to the players concerned, for Sir ' Emsley Carr was already the possessor of a picture painted by. ■Harry, Rountree, in ■which .a rook was shown flying off with a golJ ball. Mil Rountree went:, round in 65, nine stokes under bogey. .;/•;.'.;■ COSSACK'S SACRIFICE; A Cossack officer after praying earnestly, for the deliverance of his companions from hunger and cold, shot himself in the breast in. order to call the attention of all Eastern Powers to the pitiable condition of 7000 Russian refugees who have fled to'Gensan, Korea, owing to the : Soviet occupation of Vladivostok. The refugees include women and children and •450 wounded soldiers of the "White" army. The foreign colony at Seoul Bent an investigator to Gensan, who. reports that the conditions are awful , and _' beyond descriptions.; Nothing ia being. done for. the relief .and *care,; of^ther wounded. T BROKEN-BONE CHBOWX^.- ; A /well-known Berlin surgeon, Professor Bier,- claims that it is possible to increase : : the height of human beings and asserts that he has succeeded • in adding five centimetres to a dwarf upon whom he experimented. In" a brief description of the process Dr: Bier explains that the bone is j broken and the ends set temporarily. In three to five days, when the knitting process has begun, the lower part of the bone is given a sudden pull. The tissues that have begun to form are still flexible and can be stretched. The elongated tissues again begin to grow, and finally to solidify, just as they would have done if the bone had remained in its original position. '

"BEAZEN GIRLS." Mr. Alonzo B. See, a rich manufacturer and philanthropist of Brooklyn, is the author of a picturesque denunciation of American girls toward whose" higher education he has been invited to contribute by the governors of Adelphi College. The governors are trying to raise a fund of £5150,000 for ibs enlargement (if their collego. Their appeal has elicited from Mr. See the following letter " If! I had my way I would burn all the women's colleges in this country. Our young women do not need education of the' kind colleges give. What they need is instruction which will lead them to leave off smoking cigarettes and using slang. They should be ♦aught to stop their swaggering and give tip their hold, brazen manners, their paint, their powder, their lipsticks, and their high-heeled shoes, and to cease dressing indecently." DEATH v OF " SPIDER." ■■ " Spider," the London Zoo's official raticatching dog,, died recently after giving birth to a litter of nine potential ratShe was a rough-haired terrier, and during the past eight years has, under the guidance of her master, Mr. Macdcnald (keeper of the pheasantries), destroyed many hundreds of rats in the gardens. " She was as obedient as she was skilful," said Mr. Macdonaid. " Often she has caught as many as 40 rats in a couple of hoursas she did in the Prince's enclosure, when the animals were turned out. .She would wait just where I told her. A rat was &3 good 'as dead as soon as she Eet eyes on it.. Frequently I use ferrets to t get the rats out into the open, and occasionally I use ray gun ; but * Spider ' could alwavs be relied on to see that 'none escaped. She was so tame, 100, that I could take her into the pheasantries and leave her there, knowing that she would not interfere with the birds." •"■'

TRUTH BY ACCIDENT. In an advertisement of a railway company requesting the owners of unclaimed goods to remove their merchandise the letter " 1 " was dropped from the word "lawful " in the notice, which ended thus:—"Come forward and pay the awful charges on tho same." EX-M.P. LEAVES £521,000. Bequests of two years' wages each to his I private secretary and to certain of his servants were made by Mr. Lewis Haslam, former Coalition-Liberal M.P. for Newport, Mon., who left £521,454. He was a director of a cotton spinning company, and was chairman of the Parliamentary Commercial Committee. AN ACTIVE CENTENARIAN. Mr. John Britt, of St. Leonards, was 101 years of age in November and received congratulations from the King. Mr. Britt rises every morning at seven o'clock, ana. is in wonderfully good health considering his age. His son, aged > 79, lives with him. ft DROWNED IN WASH-BASIN. Goinjj into an ablution shed at* the Coast Artillery School barracks, Shoeburyness, Sergeant Odell found his wife lying on the bench, with her head in one bowl of water and her feet in another. Efforts to revive her were unavailing. Mrs. Odell had recently returned from a hospital, in which she had been a patient following a suicide attempt with a razor. A NEW PROGRAMME A new Siamese paper made the following announcement: —"The news of English, we tell the latest. Write in perfectly style and most earliest. Do a murder get commit, we hear of and tell it. Do a mighty chief die, we publish it, and in borders of somber. Staff has each one been colleged and write like Kipling and the Dickens. We circle every town and extortionate not for advertisements." EGYPTIAN LANDRU. An Egyptian merchant of Tantah and a French protege, one Mohammed Dj ellard, is to be tried at Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhone) before the criminal section of the Levant and Barbary Court for the murder of six women and a girl of twelve. The emulator of Landru has already been convicted in Egypt, but he has appealed against the sentence to the French Court. The Court of Aix hears all appeals from the French protectorates in the East. '-.

.A YOUNG BLACKGUARD. A young man who took offence at the feet that there was a small speck of dirt on his collar was at Highgate Police Court sent to prison for 14 days, on a charge of assaulting his step-mother. The youth ■was Edward Rose. ■ His step-mother said he came from his bed at mid-day, flew in a temper when ho found the dirt on his collar, and threw Krs two heavy boots at her. One boot struck her on the head. The magistrate described him as a young blackguard. A LACONIC HERO. A sequel to a gallant - act in 1917 took place the other day. A lad named Willie Wood saved the life of ai girl who had fallen into the Menai Straits and was carried away under the Menai Suspension Bridge. A number of residents purchased War Savings Certificates' fo Wood in recognition of his deed, and they were kept for him-until he attained - the ago ofi ,21; years. At a recent meeting of the Menai Bridge Council the chairman, Mr. Luther Jones, handed the certificates to Wood, who said "Thank you." and, after a I pause, added,.," Good-night.'-• ~ , v -, STORY OF TORTURE. A curious case is reported from the district of Cannat, in the department of Al- ; lier,\ in which a woman is alleged to have : been victimised by her family. Mme. Cotte, it* is stated, was "shut up in a miserable room two years ago by her .husband, son-in-law, and daughter. She was, it is alleged, placed in chains, given insufficient food, and from time to time beaten. The reason for this brutal treatment is said to be that she wished to sell property, belonging to her, against her family's wish. Immediately she spoke of her determination her long torture began. i PARENTS' RESPONSIBILITY. The Correctional Court in Paris has decided, in a case in which a ten years' old girl was knocked down by a motor-car, that she ' r should not have been in ' the streets alone. Their decision has filled the hearts of French parents with dismay at the prospect of their new responsibility. In the case in point, the girl was returning from school when she was knocked down while crossing a road. The driver failed to sound hi& horn. Only a nominal punishment small fine was meted out to him,' the Court holding that the major fault- was committed by the parents. -.. ■■.',';' ;,■ . ■. ' i '■.'■'.' . CONVICTS' WIVES. A ;plea to wives of; imprisoned men not to divorce their husbands, "and thus fail at th& most critical moment of their lives those whom they have ; sworn, to love for better or for Worse," was made at Detroit by Mr. Harry L. Hurlburt, governor of the Michigan State Penitentiary. • T have seen first • offenders • making every effort to live down their disgrace and prepare for better things on their' release," said the governor, "only to lose their grip and go down when they realise then wives have cast them off. Most of such men become 'repeaters.' They go out into the world to broken homes, and do not. care what they do." FIGHT FOR LIFE ON BEACH.. The large motor fishing-boat Corona, returning from herring fishing recently, had just touched the Deal beach when it was overturned by a mountainous wave, and left bottom upwards in the surf. Charles Bailey and Richard Brown were imprisoned in it under the waves. Two other fishermen rushed into the surf and tried to right the overturned boat, but failed. They dashed away for hatchets to make an air-hole, but before they could do so another great breaker turned the boat right side up, and washed men, herrings, and nets out of it. Bailey and Brown were by this time nearly drowned, and, weighted with sea boots and oilskins, were at the mercy of the surf. Their comrades groped in the dark for them. Bailey was found tangled in the nets, with his head just out of the water. He was pulled out in the nick of time- Brown was found clutching a rope, which saved him from being carried out to sea, BLESSING THE BOATS. The blessing of a boat is a more interesting ceremony than the christening. It is a common ceremonial in CanadaOn board a table is erected, and on a white cover are a cake, a bottle of wine, and tumblers. A priest, a beadle, a cantor, and an altar boy take part. The priest takes from a pewter platter, which the altar boy holds, a handful of salt and of wheat and sows it in the boat, in order to sow in it at the same time strength and abundance. Then he dips into holy water a branch of boxwood, made of the branch that the dove brought into the ark, sprinkles the boat, and, naming it, blesses it. The cantor chants the "Te Deum." The cantor also sines a Psalm and the "Ave Maria Stella." When he finishes, the fisherman's wife cuts the cake that has been blessed with the boat. She pours wine into the tumblers, and offers drink and food to the priest and the guests.