NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20668, 13 September 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Beeleigh Abbey, in Essex, recently celebrated its 750 th anniversary.

London policemen to the number of. 114 were bitten by dogs last year. - Only three passengers lost their lives in accidents on British railways last year. Farmers in America suffor -an annual loss of well over £500,000,000 a year from weeds.

There are more than 100 different types of coffee, Brazil providing as many as 40 varieties.

Four pairs of twins who attend a school at Muswell Hill, London, have all won scholarships. Londoners are spending on social service £10,000,000 a year more than they were in 1920..

Wonderful laundry machines recently shown in London dried and pressed shirts at the rate of 450 an hour.

Salford has veiy handsomely kept tho 700 th anniversary of its charter; 6000 performers appeared in a pageant. The familiar summer-time pest, the mosquito, is said by experts to be capable of flying a mile and a-half without getting tired.

Tho rivers and inland watragyays of tho United States carry more than 1,000,000.000 tons of commerce of that

country. Men outnumber women by about 9,000,000 in India, the male population of Calcutta alone being more than double the female.

A woman injured in an aeroplane crash remained unconscious for 548 hours, yet eventually recovered. This is believed to bo a record.

Statues mado 7000 years ago and recently found in Egypt represent women in low-necked gowns very Jy'milar to those worn to-day.

Since the introduction of wheat harvesting machines, it is estimated that two {arm labourers hav© been displaced by each implement.

Modern scales wliich, when one article is weighed, will tell the weight of any given number of the same article are in use in Sheffield.

There were 6932 commercial flights in Britain last year, in which 29,312 passengers, 839 tons of .cargo, and 99 tons of mail were carried.

Interest of money exclusively in the hands of the Jews was forbidden in England in 1341, and was not allowed until the fifteenth century.

Of the 229,830 passengers who have crossed the English Channel by air in the ten years from 1919 to 1929, 137,395 flew in British machines.

France produced more than 1,500,000,000 gallons of wine last year, and now has a surplus of 300,000,000 gallons above the requirements of the market. Six Greek stamps, which had not been through the post, were" lately sold for £220 in London, having' changed hands about five years ago for £2O.

The white currant and white rasp-,, berry, though every bit as delicately flavoured as the red, hav© pone out of fashion, and are almost unsaleable.

London is growing up fast. In the ten years, 1904-1913, the London County Council built 5085 houses as compared with 34,904 in the ten years, 1920-1929. f

" Blackmail, in my opinion, is second only to the crime of murder," said Sir Ernest Wild, the Recorder .of London, at the hearing of a recent case at the Old Bailey. •• .

Twenty-two young men from the Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, who have recently visited London, had never seen a train until they started on this journey.

Electricity is coming into general use very rapidly. At the end of the year 192829 there were about 3,000,000 consumers connected to public supply systems in Britain.

Banknotes, known as "flying money," and bearing the date of issue, a serial number, and the signature of the official who issued them, were issued in Cliinfuin 2697 B.C.

A cripple woman who works in bed has won the highest of all awards for beaten leather-work in the British Handicrafts Exhibition of the Home Arts Industry Association. The school for training boys as chefs for high-class hotel work, which was started by the London County Council in 1910, has turned out about 3000 fullytrained men since that date.

By using a steel ball as a diving chamber, a New York scientist has gone to a depth of 800 ft. below the surface of the sea. He carried on a teleDbona conversation with people on the tug.

The " quartorze juillet " —July 14—-is celebrated as a festival in France, in commemoration of the successful attack on the Bastille, the notorious Paris gaol, by the revolutionaries in 1789. Disputes arising out of proposed reductions of wages caused the loss of 2,825,000 Working days in the first five months of this year in Britain. The total loss for 1929 was 7,284,000 working days.

Greenland, where members of the Quest expedition will spend a year studying conditions on the " ice-cap," belongs to Denmark. Only about 50,000 square miles out of its 830,000 are free from ice.

Phonographs are now used in Parisian telephone exchanges to inform users of certain stock phrases as " The lino is occupied; call again, please," and " The number is changed; consult a new directory.

A British shilling of the year 1919 contains sufficient silver to mako about two 1930 coins. The coins now contain only 50 per cent, of silver, so that loz. of silver now makes more than 10s worth of money. In addition to the 7000 motor-cars now used in Shanghai, China, there are still nearly 20,000 jinrikishas in use; but the sedan chair, formerly the favourite transportation of the wealthy Chinese, has entirely disappeared. Tho tsetse fly, against which a campaign is being waged in Zululand, is said. to have helped to develop tho slave trade in Africa's " bad old times: " by killing the natives' cattle and thus preventing legitimate trado.

Drug-taking is very widespread in Egypt, where it is estimated that 500,000 out of a population of 14,000,000 are victims of the vice. Egyptians aro said to spend nearly £1 per head of the total population on drugs annually. British people aro behind the United States in fighting insect, pests. With a population /if 106.000,000, America spends at least £2,000,000 and employs 500 entomologists on tho work. The , British Empire, with moro than four times tho population, spends about a quarter of the cash and employs fewer than 500 entomologists.

Tho British Broadcasting Company's income from licences last year was nearly £1,000,000. The number of licences has increased by about 330,000, and now approaches 3,000,000. There are 16,000 free licences for tho blind. The number of S.O.S. messages sent out during the year was 881, and of these just under half : were successful. The Gulf Stream, the great; ocean carf.. rent which, according to solvations, is tending to shift • gets its name from tho Gulfof It is caused by tho westward moving waters of the South Atlantic contact with the eastward P. two gre at which sets northward.