NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21462, 8 April 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

Iron floats in mercury. Strawberries are neither fruits nor berries. Elephants smell through their trunks, not their noses. Fifty facial njuscles are contracted when a person frowns. A sparrow has twice as many bones in its neck as a giraffe. Three acres of paper can be made from a ton of wood pulp. The word "bookkeeper" has three double letters in succession. An inch of rain falling on an acre of land equals 100 tons of water. The smallest effective camera in the world is the size of a thumb nail. Rameses 11., the famous Pharaoh, was the father of 162 children—lll boys and 51 girls. ' . A shrew mouse eats more than three times its own weight of insects in twenty-four hours. There is no bone in whalebone. It is baleen, an elastic substance found in the mouth of a whale. Every flash of lightning holds electric energy worth some- £l5O, according to one expert's calculations. ' The best temperature of an office or workroom, as regards output-of work, is between 54 and 64 degrees. By adding artificial dyes to their food it is said to be possible to rear chickens with wonderfully coloured plumage. One pair of rats will produce 68 offspring in 12 months, their total progeny in two years amounting to 1500. The coldest spot in the world is at Verkhoyvansk, Siberia. The temperature is sometimes 95 degrees below zero v A compass needle does not point to the North Pole, but to the magnetic pole, which lies 1500 miles west of the true North Pole. People who are afflicted with stuttering frequently have a bigger vocabulary at their command than those without an impediment' in their speech. Motor-car drivers take the name chauffeur from a band of eighteenthcentury French brigands who tortured. their victims by burning their feet. Police officers who unscrewed the wooden leg of a man in America discovered £IOO, which, it was alleged, ha had stolen from the safe of a dairy. Eskimo and Indian women in isolated parts of Alaska buy the latest styles in clothes from a flying merchant who carries a stock of dresses to them by aeroplane. Although she is 87, Mrs. A. L. Swynnerton, the first woman associate of the Royal Academy elected since 1768, is painting two pictures for the exhibition in May. Mr. Alfred Ernest Hutson, aged 67, formerly a licensee, of King's Road, Em worth, who has just died, weighed 22 stone. He was at one time in the Metropolitan Police. The Irish Hospital Trust recently deceived £5 for welfare work in Dublin from a winner in Trieste of a £IOO prize in the last Cesarewitch Sweep. This is the first such donation. Socks are now made with a top band woven from a special . form of fine rubber mixed with cotton. This keeps i them in position and obviates the need for garters or suspenders.

Islington, one of London's boroughs, has more than 15,000 people living on* family in a room. In Finsbury, an adjoining borough, 5000 families of six or more persons are living in single rooms.

Special protection for valuable jewels is provided by a London shop which has a concrete safe that sinks into a well to form a part of the flooring during the day. The arrangement is not easily noticeable.

Two suns appeared in the sky for a short time over the Cbichibu mountains, Japan, recently, and the Tokio weather bureau said the phenomenon was due to a cloud of frozen vapour in the sky acting as a reflector. A member of the Peculiar People, a religious sect confined to Essex, Mr. Ephraim Alfred Hart, of Hockley, has died aged 74. In accordance with thedoctrine of his community he had never been treated by a doctor. Containing a request for stamps of the country where it should be picked up, a bottle thrown into .the North Sea, off the Suffolk Coast' has gone ashore at Trinidad, having travelled 4000 miles in seven months. Greater London's number of unemployed was reduced by 11,000 between November 21 and December 19 last year. Practically 90 per cent of the 1,750,000 insurable persons in the County of London are in work. Sea-bed exploration should be simplified by the use-of a new type of submarine, recently tested in New York. This small craft can crawl about the ocean bed, and has a hatch through which a diver can leave or enter it.

Birmingham, which has. a greater proportion of licensed vehicles to its population than any other British city, also holds the less welcome record for the highest number of fatal and other road accidents in any provincial centre.

The secret of good teeth is a diet rich in vitamin D and phosphorus. The former comes principally from sunshine or cod-liver oil; the best phosphorus foods are yolk of egg, milk, meat, leafy vegetables, grains, roots and tubers.

A dwarf submarine has been invented bv an American for salvaging sunken treasure and gathering sponges, oysters and pearls. It is 22ft. long, six feet wide and plated to withstand the pressure up to 600 ft. depths. The craft is equipped with air .under pressure, telephone, electricflights, grappling iron and motor.

Owing to a road-improvement scheme a number of houses at Bursledon Bridge, near Southampton, had to be removed. One owner, rather than pull his house down, has moved the whole structure, at the rate of two feet a day, by means of rollers. It may be added that the house, though large, is made of wood. A railway company operating between New York and Florida has installed a recreation car on'its run, so that passengers will not need to wait until they reach Miami to begin "their sports. The club car is equipped with a small bathing pool, mechanical horses, a punching bag and other equipment for the entertainment of passengers who want cxerciso.

Warning motorists to drive slowly in school zones, life-sized dummy policemen have been erected for the protection of children in Santa Barbara, California. The figures are constructed of plate steel and pipe bracings, and painted in vivid natural colours. When set in the middle of the street near schools, they can be seen many blocks away, thus giving drivers plenty of time to slow down. Artificial feet of rubber are serving a duck whose real feet were frozen off when it escaped from its pen in Michican one winter night. The artificial pair was fashioned at a rubber plant, constructed so that the two stumps of the duck's leg would fit into the upper part of the rubber set. After a period of hopping around, the duck has learned to use its new feet, walking and swiining with almost as much ease as the normal ones in the flock.