NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21326, 29 October 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

Of every 100 men in the British Army 86 were children during the war. Steam it is claimed has been used successfully to cool a building in Detroit. A new 300ffc. bridge was lately thrown over the river at Pontoise, France, in ten hours. Charles Gabriel, who has died at Los Angeles, composed >BOOO tunes, mostly hymns. Along the River Thames the Royal Humane Society has 300 life-saving stations. Electric trains in Britain are scheduled to spend, on an average, only 30 seconds in each station. About 30 boys from 15 English puEjic schools have been touring Canada with a guide from Eton. The Cornish borough of Penryn will shortly be free from debt, except for normal housing grants. There are over 5,000,000 children in the elementary and over 400,000 in the secondary schools in Britain. The total number of unemployed in the United States was lately estimated by Labour experts at 11,000,000. * A farmer at Leconfield, East Yorkshire, has cut and threshed a field of corn and ploughed up the stubble in one day. London's biggest sources of employment are the distributive trades, engineering and metal trades, transport and ingAmericans are going back to 'th'e land, the number moving from towns, to farms last year being 1,679,000, while the total emigrating from the country to towns was 1,472,000. Up-to-date shops in Britain for the sale of women's clothing must stock at least 30 sizes in ready-made garments and 150 styles in shoes. Although 349,000 houses have been built in London since 1921, some experts state that the metropolis is still 47,000 short of its needs. There were 4562 fires in London last year, costing on an average £l5O each. There was only one known case of arson in the same period. Overhead telegraph 'wires in Britain are gradually disappearing\ 8,750,000 miles of w r ire are now underground, out of the total mileage of 10,0G0,0(^X A meteor weighing Zcvrt%-fell in a field in the Tonneins district 0%. the Lot-et-Garonne Department, and cut a deep trench over 60ft. long. An 85-year-old French workman lias been awarded the Legion of Honour for having held the same post in a factory at Treboul, Brittany, for 72 years. A woman at the police court at Willesden, England, lately said that her husband had wiped out £159 arrears of maintenance by one day's imprisonment. . "Caught red-handed!" This phrase was first applied to a person caught in the crime of homicide. It has come to b« applied to any crime or misdemeanour. A skeleton unearthed at the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade, at Southwark, is believed to be that of a woman who died in the Great Plague. Fired by the popularity of British tailored and other goods, tradesmen in Prague are now displaying such no.tices as " Englisch Taylor " and British haters." Mr. T. A. Rees aged 76, town clerk of Merthyr for 31 years, recently died after living for fifty years with a dislocated neck, received in -a -Rngby match. Experiments are being made in Glasgow, with an aeroplane without wings and the customary controls, which will derive its power from the windmill device of rotor blades. ' The ashes of the late Admiral Hans Zenker, who commanded the cruiser Von der Tann at the Battle of Jutland, were lately dropped in the isea near the scene of the engagement. The jaws of a shark, believed to have been embedded in the earth for at least a hundred years, were found during excavation for the new Tube station at Southgate, Middlesex. The biggest suspended bell in the world is a bell in Moscow weighing 128 tons. Moscow also has the largest unsuspended bell, which weighs 398 tons, is 19ft. high, and 60ft. round the rim.' Less than one per cent of the schoolchildren of London are pOorly clad; 98 per cent are mentally normal, but only two-thirds have sound teeth and about one-half have good eyesight. The Church of St. Andrew, Undershaft, London, which is 400 years old, is one of the few remaining churches which escaped the Great Fire. It is particularly associated with John Stow, the historian of London. , 1 : The hole in the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, which is 27ft. across, is for lighting purposes, for which it is the sole source. It w<is a symbol that all worship of the gods should be performed in a building open to the vault of heaven.

Ice companies in the west of the United States have decreed that their' employees shall no longer be known as " ice men " but as " ice attendants." They must dress in white uniforms with brass buttons and carry the ice in stout black waterproof satchels. Up until 1575 toll _ was levied on old Lambeth Bridge, London. Later the bridge was declared toll free. The actual ceremony was performed by the Prince of Wales, afterward Edward VTL, accompanied by his two small sons, one of whom is now King George V. Among girls in England who have struck out a new line for themselves is Miss Isabel Villiers, daughter of Lady Victoria Villiers, and niece of' the Duke of Roxburghe. She intends io become an architect, and is working hard in an office, accepting no privileges and asking for only a fortnight's holiday in the year. The Dresden Zoo contains in its grounds a miniature children's city, with town hall, shops, railway station, traffic signals and so on. The idea of the authorities in providing this marvellous playground for the children was to train their minds in city government, and to give. them some idea of the questions and problems that must arise. Women's feet are larger than they used to be, according to experts .of the Association of Chiropodists, which lately met in Chicago. The average woman's foot has' increased in size in 25 years from 4£in. to 6£in. Athletics are blamed. The modern craze for exercise, it is said, is producing taller and larger women than those of 50 years ago. A large congregation assembled at" Northallerton Parish Church recently to witness the marriage of a bride from Canada, who had travelled over 3000 miles to be married in her old home. She was Miss Margaret Pauli, director of music at Rupert's Land College, Winnipeg. The bridegroom was Mr. Edward Crook, consulting engineer to the Wembley Electrical Company. The agricultural area of England and Wales contini:os to shrink, and the number of agricultural workers to fall. A recent return shows that, the land under crops and grass has fallen by 84,(XX) acres to 25,199,000 acres; the cultivated acreage by 220.000 acres; and the number of agricultural workers by 19,500, following the reduction of 25,200 shown last year. The wlieat acreage rose by 95,000 acres, but the increase was more than set off by the fall in other corn crops.