NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18996, 18 April 1925, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The bono frame of an average whaltt weighs about 45 tons. Nurseries and play rooms have been provided on the White Star liner Celtic. Tho total length of electrified main ; railways in Great Britain is about 340 miles. In Oxford Street, London, there is a clock on which the hour XI. appears twice. Tho weight of the earth is estimated to be 6,000,000,000,000,000,000 (six nillion) tons. . Every year Londoners spend about, £30,000,000 on travelling to and from their work. Valuable veins of slate have been discovered at Esgairgeiliog, near Corris, Merionethshire. A bridge near Peking is made entirely of porcelain, each piece of which was modelled by hand. Kaffir natives in Portuguese East Africa have orchestras composed entirely of xylophones and drums. Comets have been known to exceed a hundred million miles in length and ten million miles in breadth. Steps to protect pigeons from injury •by wireless aerials are to be taken by the British Postmaster-General. Shock from tho electric catfish, found in tropical African rivers, will knock down a man and kill other fish. It is estimated that the pressure at the centre of the earth is between 4000 and 10,000 tons to the square inch. Tho world's longest railway tunnel is that of the reconstructed City and South London Railway. It is 14 miles in length. Funds accumulated by the Grimsby special constables during the war are to bo applied to installing wireless at the hospital. A wireless receiving sot has been buiit in an old shoe. It has u crystal receiver, and the tuning dial is at the side of tho shoe, near the heel. A letter from an Islington (London) man in Vancouver, asking for assistance in securing a wife, has been received by the Mayo? of Islington. Captain Huntress, well known in racing circles, has won a wager by walking from Liverpool to London — over 200 miles—in 8£ days. Describing a dispute at Clerkenwell County Court recently as "a storm in a tea-cup," Judge Parfitt added: "The sediment at the bottom is costs." A wireless set exhibited in Chicago was built into a vanity bag after tho powder puffs, powder compartments, and the other fittings were removed. A record of 86 years of service in tho same family was celebrated by Mile. ,Victoire Desrumeaux at Comines recently. MLle. Desrumeaux is 100 years old. British firms, including the King's Norton Metal Co., have secured contracts for minting copper coins for Lithuainia. In all 142,000,000 pieces are to be minted. The smallest aeroplane in the world was flown recently at Dayton, Ohio. It weighs only 2211b., has a spread of 12ft., and travels at the rate of 75 miles an hour. A tiny field ant has been known to hold in its jaws a weight three thousand times heavier than itself. If a man had proportionately the same strength in his jaws, he could lift 275 tons. Depression in the Scottish iron trade has resulted in the closing of seven moro blast furnaces in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, leaving only 20—or one-fourth the number in operation in normal times. Fowls stranded on the verandah of a bungalow on Thames Ditton Island during the floods were rescued by R.S.P.C.A. ofheers in a boat. A summons against the owner for neglect was dismissed. In St. Albans Abbey the tick of a watch can bo heard from one end of tho building to tho other. In Gloucester Cathedral the gallery of octagonal form conveys a whisper 75ft. across the nave. No less than 38,000 tons of steei were used in the construction of the Forth Bridge. If this quantity of steel were concentrated in a single mass, it would make a block of metal 450 ft. long, 30ft. wide, and 30ft. high. Mrs. Dove Porter, of Eingham, Nottinghamshire, was 100 years old on February 11. She is a widow, and still resides in the cottage her husband bought her after their marriage, and which has been in tho family three centuries. There are twelve permissible trade names for various kinds of lamb skins used in fur manufacture, while rabbit skins have as many as thirteen approved descriptions. In one season over 17,000,000 skins wero sold at the London fur sales. So many persons wished to adopt a baby found in the public square of a small town' near Bergamo, Italy, that the chief of police decided to raffle the child. The baby was won bv a childless couple, who had it baptised Victory. The speed record for floating bottles is said to have been broken by that was thrown overboard from a United States Hydrographic Survey vessel, and was picked up recently by a French seaman. It had travelled 1500 miles in 328 days. Referring to the development of the coalfield in Sherwood Forest, the managing director of the Butterfly Colliery Company said that within the next IS years the output from the pits being sunk would bo from 15,000 to 16,000 tons per day. Tho earliest clocks with wheels wero constructed in the thirteenth century. The actual inventor of clocks is hard to trace and it must suffice that they camo into general use at the beginning of the fourteenth century. One was placed in a clock tower at Westminster in 1288. The Geological Survey of China recently exhibited what is claimed to bo the oldest scarab in tho world. It is stated to be at least fifteen million years old, and was found spread on, a stone slab under a layer of clay, with a natural but somewhat flattened appearance. A novel motor-car without wheels is equipped with two pairs of runners each 10ft. long. These aro alternately raised and lowered in advance so that the machine walks along on them very much as a horse walks on its four legs. Loads of eight tons have been transported by this vehicle. An alarm of fire was given when what appeared to bo light clouds of smoko wore seen ascending from the tower of a church at Plon, Germany. When the firo brigade arrived it was discovered that the clouds were not smoke, but a gigantic swarm of flics which had drifted high up over tho church 1 tower. A Hull butcher who some time ago missed two £1 Treasury notes from his till, on removing the till and opening a cupboard door bohind it, found two nests of young mice. Both nests were made of Treasury notes, which had been bitten to pieces. An examination of the pieces showed both numbers intact. '"The modern schoolboy is a Spartan in his appetites," said the manager of the official tuck shop at Harrow, in an interview. "Eating for the sake of eating has long gone out of fashion. Not once during 16 years at Harrow—catering for 500 boys a "day—have I had occasion to tell a boy that ho has eaten enough." The Romans wero the originators of tho Christmas tree, though their ceremony had littlo to do with the modern idea of the Christinas spirit. They began by hanging small masks of Bacchus, the god of wine, upon the grape vines, in the belief that the snot would become unusually fruitful. The occasion was mado one of merrymaking and dissipation. After the advent of Christianity it was converted into the Christmas tree celebration.