NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21640, 4 November 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

Britain consumes about 1,000,000,000 gallons of petrol a year.

Kent Is the fourth largest producer of mutton and lamb in England. Musk-rats destroyed in England have cost £1 a head, and in Scotland £4 a head.

The temporary bridge built to relieve Waterloo Bridge, London, cost £174,647. A motor-racing track made of nonslip glass is being constructed in Czechoslovakia. Efforts are being made to acquire tho mountain of Snowdon and its wide area as a national park. An up-to-date machine will turn out cigarettes at the rate of 1200 a minute, against tho handworker's five. More than 21,000 people are employed directly and wholly in the construction of aircraft and air engines.

It is against the law for a London milkman to open- a bottle of milk in the street, but he may open a can necessary. 3 In a period of eight months tliis year, ono British aircraft company has sold 52 twin-engined air-liners, worth nearly £150,000. Of the total number of insured persons in the printing, publishing, and bookbinding trades in Britain, fully 40 per cent are employed in London.

London contains a lifeboat station, where 19 of these humanitarian vessels are constantly ready, to be rushed off to replace boats which meet with disaster.

Roller-skating has become a craze in San Francisco, the United States, where this means of transport has been declared a vehicle liable to all traffic laws. When two pieces of optical glass are ground perfectly smooth and placed together, their molecular attraction is so strong that they cannot be separated by human force. France is stated to have received 30,000 of the Germans banned by the present German Government, 'while 8000 have gone to Holland, and 3000 to Czechoslovakia. Within the next four years, it is estimated that there will be a drop of 350,000 in the number of schoolchildren in Britain. This decrease will become 1,000,000 in 1948. A perfectly-tuned bell, when properlv struck, gives -off not one tone but a chord of five distinct notes. In some bells, trained ears can recognise as many as thirteen notes.

The world's greatest archers are the Tarascaus ; a tribe of Mexican Indians. With their bows and'arrowß, many of them, it is claimed, can split a grain of wheat at thirty feet. Mr. John Anderson, a Glasgow holiday-maker at Kinghorn, Fife, felt something solid between his bathing suit and his skin. He found that it was a sole, weighing a pound. Beauty parlours for children are appearing in the West End of London. Here girls of nine can have their eyebrows plucked, their nails tinted, and their hair permanently waved. The Franco-German War of 1870 still costs the German Government £396,000 a year. This is the amount contributed to-day by the Reich towards the pensions of 21,000 veterans who still survive.

is still declining in Great Britain. No fewer than 75,000 farm workers have left the land since 1923, and 45,000 fewer acres were actually under crops in 1932, as compared with 1931.

Out of 565 open scholarships and ex- ? hibitions given by Oxford and Cambridge Universities last year, 305 were won by boys from grant-aided schools. Of these, 58 per cent had been educated at elementary schools. The most expensive motor-car in the world belongs to the Shah of Persia. The switchboard and steering gear are studded with diamonds, sapphires,, and rubies, and the clockwork is inlaid with gems. The car cost £25,000. In Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana, native women carry everything—from milk bottles to coffins—on their heads. Their aversion to using their hands is so strong that they even carry letters in this manner, weighted dowii by a brick. One person out of every four of Britain's population us«b the Post Office Savings Bank; there are now 1,000,000 more depositors than there were in 1912, while the average balance is 50 per cent higher than it was 20 years ago. Races are timed at the Singapore Turf Club by the largest stop-watch in the world. The starting-gate sets the watch working, and the first horse past, the post intercepts a beam of light jvhich stops the watch and records the time.

In 1932 614,320 births and 484,083 deaths were registered in England and Wales. The population, therefore, increased by 130,237, compared with an average over five years of 162,891. The number of persons married during tho year was 612,264.

British railways last year bought 14.000,000 tons of coal, 210,000 tons of rails, 296.000 tons of ironwork, 21,000,000 bricks, 17,000,000 cubic feet of timber and 4.000,000 sleepers, 9000 tons of paint, 62,000 tons of oil, and over 2000 miles of cloth.

A collection of butterflies, probably the most complete in the world, will shortly be on show in a Paris museum.' It contains about 100,000 specimens of butterflies caught by the Swiss entomologist, M. Frhustorfer. They are chiefly from India and Australia.

A villager, who stumbled over a king cobra 13ft. long and Sin. thick in tha ,i uncle of the Western Ghats, near Pechupara, in South Travancore, succeeded after a two-hour struggle in bringing the reptile under control. It was sent to the Trivandrum Zoo. The rarefied air of high altitudes has a strange effect on the minds of mountain climbers. They not only experience difficulty in remembering what they are doing, but sometimes have hallucinations which cause them to descend the mountain"while believing they are still going upward: The municipal council of the city of Mainz has decided that all the inhabitants shall greet each other in the Hitler fashion. Every man will raise his right hand to the full length of his arm when he meets a friend. Further, ho will not sav " Good-day," but exclaim " Hail Hitler." The loudest voice in the world is claimed by Mr. Lee Chrisman, Kentucky auctioneer, whose yodelling from a peak in the Tennessee mountains was heard by judges eight miles away. His voice was heard by listeners stationed in three separate States —Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.

I The number of persons employed | directlv bv the railways in England is about 575,000, and the annual wages bill is in the neighbourhood of £100,000,000. In addition, many thousands aro permanently employed in other industries fulfilling the ordere placed by railway companies. The worlds most luxurious residency is the " Palace of the Winds iri g Jaipur City. India. This great marble building, which cost the maharajah _ £10,000,000, contains every known aft* ; vice for comfort and pleasure, including musical instruments attached to - each of the 3462 windows, so thati the* siug when the wind blows through