NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19460, 16 October 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

There aro 20,000 knitters of woollen goods in the Shetland Islands. It has been noted that the oak is struck by lightning more often than any other tree. In some Eastern countries the petals of the yellow water lily are used for dessert. A man in England with two wooden legs, it is iecorded, walked a mile in 13£ minutes. In Tokio 22,900,231 dead flics were counted as a result of an extermination campaign. Women doctors comprise about 12 per cent of the total number of medicos practising in London. In Detroit is installed the largest boiler in the world, capable of heating 1,000 eight-roomed houses. The world's longest telephone cable is said to extend from Chicago to New York City. It is 861 miles long. Last year's birth rate in England and Wales was the lowest on record, with the exception of 1917 and 1918. Postage stamps were first used by Britain in 1840, followed by Brazil 1843, and in 1847 the United States. Foxhounds are not cheap pets. It is not at all unusual for good hounds to fetch as much as £4OO each. Fish found in America which have lungs as well as gills have been bred by a London scientist to live on land. The telegraphic traffic between London and Manchester is heavier than between any two other offices in the world. Running backward, an American variety performer declared he can do 75yds. in 9 7-10s. when in training. The nightingale's song is never heard in Scotland or the extreme north of England, nor in Devonshire or Cornwall. Moths bred in smoky areas are apt to torn black. Such specimens aro frequent in the North and Midlands of England. , Thriftiness is spreading very rapidly in Britain. It is estimated that 100 banks are built for every church erected in a year. A German manufacturer has made what is believed to be the smallest motorcycle. It is fully equipped and weighs only 301b. Mutton has been removed from the British Army bill-of-fare, as it is so expensive. The result will be a saving of £50,000 a year. Crime is practically unknown in one part of the British Empire—the Falkland Islands, in the Pacific—where there is also no unemployment. The present Imperial State crown of England, kept in the Tower of London and used at coronations, weighs 39 ounces 5 pennyweights troy. Among the passengers on an air liner } which flew from London to Paris recently was a two months old baby, lying on a pillow in its mother's lap. "Flapper bracket" was the quaint name bestowed upon a motor-cycle carrier, when used by pillion-riders, by a Warwickshire coroner recently. The presents at a Walton-on-Thames wedding recently ranged from a 'packet of pins to a house. The latter was the gift of the bridegroom's father. An American testing machine to measure the durability of cloth records that a man can sit down 97,000 times before the trousers show signs of wear.

Poplar's infantile death rate has fallen from 186 per 1000 in 1901 to 75 per 1000 last year, in spite of the fact that 37,000 families live in 23,000 dwellings.

Attending Sunday school for two years was one oi ! the conditions imposed upon a Sutton lad when lie was bound over recently at the local police court. Ten of Britain's leading public schools have young headmasters who were between the "ages of twenty-six and thirtynines when they were appointed. A schoolboy has recently made what is believed to'be the tiniest electric motor in the world, it being so small that, it could bo mounted on an ordinary finger ring.

No army, no taxation, no roads, and, therefore, "no motor-cars, that is the record of Andorra, the strange little republic in the Pyrenees between France and Spain.

Constant repairs are necessary to the Hammersmith Suspension Bridge, London, as the vibrations of the traific cut' the, bolts holding the steel girders in place.

English bell-founding is now so highly regarded that orders for bells are received from Dutch and Belgian towns, though the Low Countries are the home of the carillon.

The largest diamond that has ever been mined is said to come from South Africa in 1905. It was as large as an average sized man's §st, and weighed a pound and a half.

Sketches of various ways of making up a bed are displayed in the bedrooms of one up-to-date London hotel. Guests can tell the chambermaid which style they prefer. For the benefit of blind listeners in Britain, the National Institute of the Blind report that 158 wireless sets and 282 pairs of headphones hava been presented to them.

Felt hats are imported in such numbers into Britain that the British industry is suffering severely. The number of foreign hats has risen from 1,154,556 in 1911 to 8,707,884 last year.

King George is credited with a wonderful shooting feat—he took four pheasants with successive shots, the fourth bird being hit before the first had reached the ground.

Pack-mules have had to be employed to take food supplies to the Welsh village of Cwrngrenig, Carmarthenshire, as the only road to the place has been broken up for drainage alterations.

The motor ambulances maintained by the London County Council answered 31,700 calls last year, the average tims taken to arrive on the scene working out at only 7 minutes 2,4 seconds.

Li Kashmir, where the temperature is often as low as 20 degrees below zero, the poorer people keep themselves warm by carrying a bowl full of hot ernbefi® under their one and only garment. tThe short, straight tail of the hippopotamus is out of proportion to the huge body. A hippopotamus at the London Zoo", which had a body 12ft. long, weighing four tons, had a tail only 22in. long. Records taken over 36 years show that the greatest number of fatal influenza cases in Britain occur about the ninth or tenth week of the year, and the fewest about the thirty-fifth or thirty-sixth week.

Salaries paid to Presidents vary greatly. Germany grants \ oil Hindenburg £3,000 a year,"with £6,000 for expenses; while France pavs her President £BO,OOO, and the United States of America £20,000 a war.

In salving the German battleship Hindenburg. which was scuttled at fecapa Flow, divers will have patched up about 700 holes. The cruiser weighs 27,000 tons and is estimated to contain 6000 tons of water.

Colour wash weighing half a ton was presented recently as a surprise gift to a South London vicar. Immediately volunteers, including the curate,, a sailor, a waiter and two clerks, set to work to paint the church. All kinds of domestic, utensils, from drink,ing-mugs to washing-tubs, which look like pottery but are unbreakable, are made from wood-pulp in the Norfolk town of Thetford. Ilie articles arc luost artistically decorated.