NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20620, 19 July 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Londoners make about 512 journeys per head of the population every year. London's tramways showed a surplus of £688,000 over the financial year 1929 29. Britain's longest bridge is the Tay bridge, which is over two miles in length. According to old Acts of Parliament, still in force in Britain, coconut-shies are illegal. Out of the 468 cases of influenza in the British Navy in a recent year, only one case was fatal. . Paris has recently established 66 free parking spaces known as " parkins " yi the metropolitan area, London's usual rate of growth is something like 100 houses a day and several miles of streets every week. Emigrants to the number of 3473 were helped to go to the overseas Dominions last year by the British Legion. To distinguish them fiom patrons, waiters in a New York restaurant wear a small blue button in their coat lapel. London's road deaths now average about 110 a month among cities, Birmingham. Liverpool,. and Manchester come next. Police guards, composed of picked detectives, are suggested for liners carrying the mail, owing to the number of thefts. London's first directory, published in 1677, contained 44 pages; the current post office directory now comprises 4000 pages. Thirty-five million rabbits, weighing 40,000 tons, are caught every year in Great. Britain, states a report on food supplies. There were 248,700 people employed in the British Civil Service in 1914. This figure had grown by January of this year to 304,000. Of the 80,000 tons of blended butter sold in Britain every year, 60,000 tons contains a proportion of inferior butter from abroad.'

Finds, including Hofnan urns and pottery, have been made during excavation work on the Sandy Lodge golf course, in Hei tfordshire.

Ships are growing bigger. In pre-war days 1,500,000 tons of merchant shipping represented 500 ships; now it represents about 350 ships. If one match was saved by each person in Great Britain daily the saving in the course of a year would be no less than 182,500,000 boxes.

The safest place in Great Britain last year, where road accidents are concerned, wa3 the Isles of Scilly, where there was not a single casualty.

A motion picture factory with a capacity for 75 full-length films a year and including apparatus for talking films is being built at Moscow, Russia.

Saddles were first used for riding in England about 600 A.D., side-saddles for women were introduced in 1388 by Anna of Bohemia, Richard IT.'s wife. Salaries in the British Ministry of Labour will cost £4,241.000 this year. This department spends £53.000 in telegrams and telephones annually. Every telephone call to America which goes from Europe—Stockholm, Paris, or Berlin—passes through an exchange in Queen Victoria Street, London. While travelling at fifty miles an hour on the Canadian National Railways passengers can now ring up either their home or business addresses by telephone. Though there were fewer retail cooperative stores in Great Britain in 1928 than in 1918 by nearly 50. the sales had risen by something 'ike £50.000,000, The greatest waste agent in the world is rust. Sir Robert Hadfield says that the world loses at least £590,000,000 yearly owing to the corrosion of iron and steel.

For the census, which will be taken in Britain next year, that country has been divided into 40,000 enumeration districts. The census is expected to cost £500.000. Retired naval officers adopt many and varied professions, from boarding-house keepers, school-masters, and insurance, agents to rabbit-breeders and coal dealers. Ice skating has been responsible for a great increase in casualties in London hospitals, the injuries ranging from broken fingers to concussion and fractured limbs. Weight-reducing is now becoming gen : eral among the police of Chicago. The weight of the constables was increasing so much that an official " diet " has been issued.

No less than £83,000 worth of broad goes weekly into London's dustbins. Ihis is the equivalent of 2,000,000 loaves -in the form of crust, crumb;;, and unused scraps.

A ton of tobacco leaf yields 4e\vt. of ash, which is of very high value as a soil fertiliser. Smakers in Britain waste more than 9000 tons of thiis valuable ash yearly.

For 34 years lifeboatmen at Caister, Great Yarmouth, England, Mr. H. Barnard and Mr. W. Haylett have retired. They have helped to save 371 lives from shipwrecks. More than 10.000 tons of waste paper arc collected in London every month for repulping, and it is reckoned that as much more is used for lighting fires or wrapping parcels. Great Britain spends about £30,000,000 yearly in manufacturing artificial light, and of this colossal sum mere than 90 per cent, is thrown away and wasted in the shape of mere heat. Because the Sunday Observance Act of 1780 was pleaded in opposition, the Haywards Health Sussejt, magistrates have ruled that they were not fcble to grant a seven days' cinema licence. A special ship has recently been built at Hull, England, to carry rolls of newsprint paper from Nova Sco'ia to England, the holds being lined with wood to prevent contact with the steel plates.

After paying all running expenses and charging interest on the state capital employed, the British post office had a surplus of £9,000.000. the only unprofitable branch being the telegraphic service. Women are proving formidable rivals to men as window-dressers. After working for two years or so 011 a small salary as a learner, a woman window-dresser may make from £3 to £lO a week in Britain.

The Island of Nihau, the most mucin of the Hawaiian group, has a population of 130, but has no post office, radio or gaol. Prohibition has hrcrV in force t.ir 60 years, and the salo of tobacco is also forbidden.

Sickness causes a yearly loss equivalent (o 12 months' work for 514,C00 persons in the United Kingdom. These figures apply only to cases where swl< disablement payments are made under the National Insurance scheme. A Guernsey cow was taken for a flight at the International Aircraft Exh.b. .o" ■if St Louis and both fed and milked in the air Paper bottlcs contain.i.R t m milk were dro/ped overboard attached to Lilliputian parachutes, and reached tlm ground unbroken. ° Seeing that the inner door of a shop m Gateshead, England, hnd- been opened a constable on night duty summoned reinforcements, and the buildin" was surrounded. A police van was waiting U\ carry off possible captives when through the door majestically walked—a big cat. Any ono in London healing lour musical notes from a motor horn knows that the Queen's car' is near. ; It is a green car und is only identified by 3 small disc above the driver's seat. At. night it carries a purple lamp. A special musical horn has been fitted. _ It is worked by electricity and to sound four notes at intervals, as ionj as the driver finds necessary.