NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21248, 30 July 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

The first diamonds were discovered in South Africa in. 1868. British railways now employ 100,000 fewer mew than they did in 1925. Over the whole population Britain has an average income of £SO a year per head, including children. . . ! AH. real amber, which is a mineralised . resin from a certain extinct tree, is at least 600,000 years old Only one copy of the first number of the Times newspaper exists. It is in tho British Museum library. In Rome it is possible to arrest a person on suspicion, when the arrested man has to prove his innocence. Wireless licences issued in Biitain work out at an average of about ono to every ten of the population. Copies of the first edition of the famous. Bradshaw's Time-Table, published in 1839, are now worth £IOO eaCh. g British farmers produce more potatoes, wheat, oats and barley per acre than do "those of either France or Germany. A collie dog saved a Hull household, by waking them when fire broke out recently, but the dog lost its own life. In her first year the Canadian Pacific, liner Empress of Britain travelled about 100,000 miles, and carried 10,800 passengers. Coal has been turned by a new German process into a fertiliser so good that certajn crops are reported to be doubled! by its use. A pigeon which recently alighted on an Atlantic liner in tho English Channel, wan taken to New York and back in the ship'n flower house. Letters have been sent by rocket over a distance of more than one mile from the top of an Austrian mountain to a village below. A cannon, believed to be one used by Sir Francis Drake in his attack on Havana, has been found by fishermei off the Cuban coast. Nightingales are reported as having returned this year to many spots in the South of England, from which- they have been absent for years. Seven scenes from the life of St. Pat- . rick were given in a pageant witnessed by 20,000 people at Strangfo'rd Lough, County Down recently. Britain's longest golf course is Prince's;, at Sandwich, which has a declared length of 6998 yds. A good player will cover four miles in one round. The cheapest horse that ever won tho Derby was Little Wonder, who wa3 bought for less than £7O in 1838, and won the "Blue Riband" in 1840. Britain has now 5,000,000 acres less under arable crops than it -had in 1868, and half a million fewer people are directly employed in agriculture. There are believed to be 34,000,0C0 wireless sets in use all over the world, of which number the United States has the highest individual total—about 14,000,000. A comprehensive scheme of restoration is to be undertaken at Alford, .Lincolnshire, parish church, as a memorial to the late Canon Warren, for 47 years rector. Two-thirds of the people convicted of crime in Britain in 1930 were less than thirty years of age; two-fifths were still in their teens. The total number of convictions was 56,767. Mr. James Henry Evans, a retired enfine driver, who for some time had . H. Thomas, the Dominions Secretary, as his fireman, died a' few weeks ago at Rayleigh, Essex, aged 81. „ Central Northamptonshire has been experiencing a plague of rats unequalled in living memory. Good incomes are being made by unemployed men; who are paid 2d each for rat tails. Two enormous logs of mahogany were stored at the West India Docks, London, recently. One, from Honduras, weighed over 11 tons, and the other, from West Africa, more than 10g tons. - English, Irish and Scottish people frequently emigrated to Poland hundreds of years ago. In one case, in the ea:rly sixteenth century, 30,000 Scots went in a body and became pedlars. Boys of to-day are taller, . says a British authority, than those of a previous generation; even youngsters of eight are half an inch taller than were the boys of that age twenty years ago. So that Cockneys can explore their own city, a London Explorers t Club has been formed. At week-ends members visit interesting places which are unknow<| to the average Londoner. Between October, 1929, and September, 1930, 66,717 men offered themselves fop the British Army. Fifty-two per cent, of these men could not be accepted owing to their inferior physical condition. A toreador was seriously injured at Frejus in the first bull-fight ever held on the Riviera. It took place in an arena where * gladiators fought for the amusement of Julius Caesar 2000 years ago. The British War Office has offered a 14-years' lease of seven acres of Staddon Heights, a Devon beauty spot, to tho Plympton St. Mary Rural District Council at the nominal rent of £1 per annum. Nine ships in the British Navy have borne the name Delight. The first was a small vessel of 120 tons, which was wrecked on tho coast of Newfoundland in 1583; tho latest is a destroyer of the D class. Blind ex-Servicemen, trained at St. Dunstan's, are now working at telephone exchanges all over Britain. They are taught to tako shorthand notes of messages; the full course of training takes about a year. Because part of Mr. Augustus John's portrait of his daughter was painted in the South of France, the Royal Academy has discovered that it cannot buy it for the Tate Gallery under the terms of the Chantrey bequest. Statistics and superstition do not usually go together, but it was recently revealed that a well-known German airman is allowed a reduction on his life insurance premium on condition that he doesn't fly on tho thirteenth of' the month. The annual award by tho Lincolnshire Agricultural Society to- tho labourer who has brought up and placed out the greatest number of children without receiving parish relief has gone this year to Mr. Walter Graves, of Lincoln, whose record is 14 children. A sentence of three months' imprisonment with hard, labour was passed at Birmingham Polico Court, a few weeks ago on Frank Kemp, aged 15 22, a farm labourer, who was charged with attempting to steal 4d from a church offertory box. A Russian engaged in unloading trucks in Corsica stole a railway engine because he wanted to get to another town late at night. He was captured by the polico who had pursued him on foot, three miles tip the line, where his stolen engine had " stuck." Of Dick Grace, the aviator who became - a " stunt actor " at Hollywood, it is said that " he bears the scars of 34 crashes. He has broken his neck, dislocated his backbone, broken his.ribs nine timen, ana been pierced a dozen times by broken propellers, flying cylinder heads, motor parts, and caved-in fuselage. The Trustees of the British Museum 1 have accepted the treasure trove found under a hedge bank at Towednack, Cornwall, by a labourer, who will receive a considerable sum of money as a reward for his discovery. The treasure consists.of six bracelets and two torques '(necklaces _ of twisted metal) made of pure gold, probably about 3000 years old. Electrotype copies of the specimens wig be offered ,™ the museums of Truro and Penzance*