NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21224, 2 July 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

In Holland all Christian names after the first are taxed

The bark of a tree which grows in tho Malay Islands yields a line soap.

Only about one-quarter of the. pro perty stolen in London is ever recovered

England's oldest ciergyman, the Rev. Charles Green, recently died at Eastbourne at 101. London's underground railways use up well over two hundred tons of tickets every year. There are now a million and a-half electric fires in England and 300.0C0 electric cookers. Since religious freedom was allowed in Spain, the sale of Bibles has gone up by 60,000 a year. The official cost to England per head of the boys in the Borstal Institute is £SB 18s fid a year. Among the railway " lost property " last year was a baby which was found in a London waiting room. Britain consumes every year about. 35,000,000c\vt. of fruit of which about 10,000,000cwt. is home-grown. There was not one death sentence passed in Scotland, nor was there one execution in Scottish prisons, throughout 1931. Tortoise eggs take a long time—from eight to thirteen months —to hatch, according to the conditions in which they are laid. John Hogan, a man at, Walerford, lieland, aged 100, lias never slept for one night away from the house in which ho was born. In the wardrobe rooms at Coveut Garden Opera House are stored thousands of costumes, sufficient to " dress " about sixty different operas.

Mrs. Helen Wills-Moody, the famous American lawn-tennis champion, when she recently went to Europe, took with her twenty-five tennis rackets. Among the words " banned " on the wireless is the English place-name Cirencester. This is pronounced " Sissister," and so is too sibilant for radio use.

Nearly twenty-six million motor-cars are registered in the United States, tho owners paying about £70.000.000 in registration and licence fees last year. Grace Darling's cousin, Mr. James Anderson, a churchwarden at Earsdon Parish Church, recently celebrated his 99th birthday. He still lives a useful and active life.

Pupils were recently successfully grafted on the eyes of a New York youth who had been blind from birth. This was the first time such an operation, which is very delicate, had been performed. It is estimated that there are some-three and a half million wireless sets in use in Britain for which no licence is paid. The post ofiice thus loses £1,700,000.

The explosion of a firearm is dulled to practically the equivalent, of the sound of a book closing by a newly invented silencer, which will not be put on sale to the general public. The Chester City Council has agreed to postpone the bypass road over tin* site of the Roman amphitheatre, so that the site may be excavated at some futura date if the money can be raised.

German policeman now arc wearing bakelite hats. Recently the standard equipment for such officers was changed to include moulded helmets, which afford protection, and are more durable than gteel.

The massacre of 2000 monks at the Battle of Chester in A.I). 613, when they were helping the Welsh against tho Northumbrian Saxons, will be re-enacted at the 1933 Welsh National Eisteddfod.

Among the lectures given in British prisons last year were " A Trip to Kashmir," " With Allenby in Palestine," " A Nicht wi* Burns," " Peeps at Famous Cities," and " A Trip Through the Highlands."

Tomatoes and grapes are grown in Britain in glasshouses covering 3000 acres. Half of these are in the Lea Valley, a large proportion of the other half being situated round Worthing, on the South Coast.

Alleging that his moustache, which he had. grown continuously for 47 years, had been closely cropped when he had ordered only a shave, a man at Providence, United States, has claimed £SOO as damages from the hairdresser.

A deep blue South African stamp of the value of fourpence has been sold in London for £36. Its great interest centres in the fact that it was an emergency stamp, isisued 77 years ago because a valuable ship failed to arrive at Capetown.

The longest will on record was made by Mrs. .Florence Cooke, of London. She started writing it when she was twenty, and she died when she was forty; it then filled eight large volumes, and disposed of an estate of about £SOOO.

On the, southern railwav in Surrey is a station with a name of only eight letters, but it contains ten words which can be spelled without altering the sequence of the letters. The station is Norbition, and the words are: No, nor, or, orb, orbit, bit, it, to, ton, on.

A "man named Hille was driving his car recently near Bodenfelde in Germany when a crow flew into his windscreen. The bird and the fragments of the glasss were so suddenly dashed into the; face of the driver that he lost control of the car, which fell into a ravine.

A grant of £245.0C0 from the Rockefeller Foundation has been made to TileGill University in Montreal for the establishment of a neurological institute, and plans are under way for the development of a neurological centre, second to none on the American continent.

The average amount received daily in British post offices was almost as largo last year as in 1930,-* and much larger than in 1924. In 1924 the dailv receipt was £115,000; last year it was £113.000. In the first, three months of this year it was a little less, but was still as high as £127,000.

Railway passengers in the Gare St. Lazaro, Paris' famous railway station, can buy clothes, books, and drinks, receive dental treatment, telephone overseas, have a shave or a'hair-wave, or attend a cinema while waiting for their trains. Notices of trains about to depart are shown on the screen between the films.

In building a war memorial on Montfaucon, in the Argonne, the workers discovered the foundations of an old castle built in 1076. This fortress was destroyed and reconstructed in the eleventh, thirteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. It was also the scene of an American attack on an enemy position in 1918.

The highest cliffs in the British Isles, and perhaps even in Europe, are to be found on the little island of Foula, to the westward of the Shetland group. Here, facing the north-west, is a cliff known as tlie Kame, which has a drop of no less than 1372 ft. Curiously enough, on the east side of Foula the cliffs are very low, and in some places the land is almost level with the seashore.

The rivalry between two ancient kings led to the invention of parchment". Ptolemy Philadelphia forbade the export of papyrus reed from Egypt to King Eumenes of Pergamus because he jealously felt that Eumenes might build up a library greater than his own. It therefore became necessary for Eumenes to search for a substitute, and he ordered the skins of sheep to be dressed in sucb a way that they could be written tipos*