NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21112, 20 February 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Tho Grand Opera House in Paris has 2531 doors. There are 9000 cells in a square foot of honeycomb. The mocking-bird has been adopted as the official bird of Texas. Engineering finds employment for 50,000 women in London alone. The word which occurs oftenest in tho Bible is " and." Ifc occurs 46,721 times. The largest building in the world is the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, Egypt.. Motor-cycle police in Los Angeles are to have machines equipped with wireless.' The finest pair of elephant tusks which" ever reached London were 9ft. in length and weighed 1461b. apiece. A beautiful Roman water bottle, much admired for its graceful* shape, has been dug up at Longfield, in Kent. It takes eight gallons of special oil to give each of the elephants at the London Zoo its annual beauty bath." The total weight of rock and earth removed in constructing the Panama Canal was estimated to be 360,000,000 tons. During the winter the London Midland and Scottish Railway proposes to spend over £2,000,000 on improvements. The British flag is called & Jack because it was the first used only for flying on the jackstaff at the 6tern of warships. More than 5,000,000,000 cigarettes equal to five for every man, woman, stu! child of the population, were smoked in Canada in 1930. The results of the census taken in Rumania at the end of 1930 show the total population to be 18,025,237. Bucharest, the capital, has 631,288 people. The century-old Hungarian banking firm Aldolphe Rohrer and Sons has decided to wind up its business and has obtained a moratorium to enable it to do so. Railways are still the safest form of travel, according to French official figures, which gave the order of safety as railways, shipping, motor-cars, and aeroplanes. y The daughter born a short time ago to the Emperor and Empress of Japan has been named Atsuko Yurinomiya, meaning " Princess of Honesty and Obedience. A motor-car specially built for an American millionaire, who is an aviation enthusiast, has a glass roof so that tho motorist can watch aeroplanes overhead. Tusks of mammoths which lived nearly 50,000 years ago are stored at the* London docks. These tusks are usually found in the ice in the sub-arctic areas of Siberia* Mr. Isaac Gough, of Gloucestershire, England, makes so much money by trapping rabbits that he has to pay income tax. He claims to have got 534 in one night. On one Swedish railway line alone, more* than 1000 reindeer were run over and killed in 1930, over £2OOO having to ba paid in compensation to the owners of the animals. Six machine guns can be carried by n new single-seater fighting aeroplane recently tested successfully by the British Royal Air Force. It can travel at 200 miles an hour. The front legs of a hare are very short in proportion to its hind legs. When it is climbing a slope it gets a better purchase on tho ground than when it is running on the flat. In four years the strength of the personnel of the British Navy has been reduced by 10,000 officers and men. It is estimated that on March 31 the number will be 91,840. Female grasshoppers will lav from 600 to 800 eggs at a time, so that in tho course of one year a single grasshopper may be responsible for from 150,000 to 400,000 descendants. The Spanish Treasury, taking up nearly 10.000 unsold tickets fti the State Christmas lottery, drew the first prize of £375,000. The Finance Minister described the unexpected win as a godsend. A new breed of Persian long-haired cat, called the blue cream, now coming into prominence, was one of the features of the National Cat Club's recent Championship Show at the Crystal Palace, London. A direct saving of £2500 in lighting and heating is expected to result from the new hours in London's elementary schools. The afternoon session will now commence at 1-30 p.m. and end at 3.30 p.m. for infants and 4 p.m. for older pupils. The King has approved of the award of the Albert Medal for bravery to Private William H. Foster, Ist Leicestershire Regiment, for rescuing in June last a fellow-soldier who was trapped in a forest fire at Sabatha, Simla. Mrs. Anastasia O'Keefe, of New York, in suing for a separation from her husband, said he was worth £300,000, but had bought her only one coat in 22 years. She said" he has a seven-passenger motorcar, but never allowed her to ride in it. The identification on the flat side of » brick is to provide a cavity to contain the cement. Bricks are sometimes made hollow to allow a current of air to pass through the wall. This keeps the wall dry and acts as an insulator to regulate the temperature. It is said that the London County Council has saved considerably more than half a million sterling on running the guardians' hospitals. These savings are partly due to the fall in the cost of living, but the major part of the savings has been effected in other directions. Cambridge, Vermont, United States, claims to have the tallest family in the world. The members measure together 54ft. 7in. It is the Bogue family. The father is 7ft. tall; next is Max, his eldest son, who is 7ft. 2in. tall. The other six are all more than 6ft. 6in. in height. Having reached tho age limit —60 years —Captain Evan Davics, of the White Star liner Baltic, whose home is at Nevin, North Wales, went into well-deserved retirement at the end of December. During his 48 years at cea Captain Davies has covered 2,200,000 miles by sail and steam. The substantial decrease in the cost of the British Army for 1930 was largely accounted for by two facts: (1) the army was 10,000 under strength, and this meant a saving of about 5s perlflan per day; (2) in 1929 a soldier's daily ration cost Is ljd, whereas in 1930 it cost lO^d —a saving of 3d a day on the feeding of 150,000 meu. A cork leg kept Alex. Stark, mate of "the schooner Edith and Elinor, afloat for two hours when his ship was and sunk off Halifax, in Nova Scotia. Stark said that he would have gone down with the ship if the leg had not buoyedjnm up until rescue boats could find him. Six men lost their lives in the disaster. Mr. Montague Stanley Napien formerlv chairman and joint managing director of 1). Napier and Son, Limited, English motor-car and aeroplane engine manufacturers, who died at Cannes rcccntlv, e an estate worth £1.243,578 His firm, desiged the engines fitted in the Gloucester Napier aeroplanes that won the Schneide trophy for Britain. Thieves who anticipated a seasonable haul at a' wine merchant s shop at Leeds, had a bitter disappointment when they uncorked tho bottles they stole. lhe robbers took something like a dozen bottles of whisky, as they supposed but the proprietor next day had the satistastion of discovering that they had bottles of coloured water used for the purposes of display.