NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21716, 3 February 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

In the case of a normal person the heart beats over 100,000 times each day. * - Wind seldom blows in an exactly straight line for any* distance exceeding 500 miles. Goat skin is regarded as one of the toughest skins procurable for upholstering furniture. . In Timor-Laut, East Indies/women are required by law to keep one eye closed in the* presence of men. Fisherwomen in the Scilly Isles still ' use spears to catch plaice, as the ancient Britons did 2000 thousand years ago. Posted at Taunton, only SO miles away, on July 24, 1914, a.postcard was lately delivered at an Exeter address. - A cat dislikes rain because ito fundoes not contain any oil, and so comes clogged and uncomfortable when 5 wet. . ' Of the 3935 divorce decrees mads absolute in Britain in 1932, 1654 weia husbands' petitions and 2271 were wives'. A set of false teeth has been made by a Lancashire billiard marker out of an old billiard ball. He now wears the denture. Britain has i ust nbor.t twice as many fatal accidents per 1 thousand road vehicles as does the United States of America. , A summons against a doctor was applied for by a woman at Bow Street Police Court. She alleged that he had insulted her in Latin. London contains-- 711 solicitors and 438 barristers who [are enrolled as ready to give their professional services in " poor persons' cases." A man's brain, on the average, weighs 31b. Bozs., as compared withja woman's 21b. llozs., but size of brain is no criterion of intelligence. The " spirits " of 168 horses and 19 cows that served the Imperial Household of Japan have been honoured at a special service in Tokio. Aeroplanes-may be pawned at the State Pawnshop in Paris, but not balloons, as these have a habit of bursting before the pledge is redeemed. " Dance while you travel " is now the slogan of the Czecho-Slovakian State Railway, which has equipped its long-distance trains with dancing-saloon cars. Tokio, Japan, Trith 5,486,200 inhabitants, is now the third largest city in the world. It follows London, with 8,202,818, and New York, with 6,981,927. Hazelnut butter, 2,700 years old, and still in good condition, has been found buried with the remains of a man of the Iron Age in a grave in Germany. Among countries containing more than 100,000 telephones, Great Britain comes ninth so far as the number of telephones per 100 of the population is concerned. • " A bronze lion, 12ft. high, which will roar at noon, and a cock, 6ft. high, which will crow at sunrise and sunset, are features of a huge new clock erected in Messina, Sicily. . Convictions for drunkenness .in, British courts fell from 42,343 in, 1931, to 30,146 in 1932. This record is only beaten by 1918, widen the total convictions numbered 29,075. Traffic in titles has now bean made illegal in Germany. One baron is reputed to have adopted and given his name to seven children for sums ranging from £SO to £IO,OOO. There are more than 53,000 miles of gas' mains in Britain; they supply nearly 10,000,000 customers. The annual quantity of gas consumed approaches 300,000,000,000 cubic feet. From a prison camp, where enemy neutrals were interned during the war, Kapuskasing, in Ontario, Canada, has grown into a thriving town, boasting a theatre and a £70,000 hotel. The hundredth anniversary of their wedding day has been celebrated by two Yugo-Slav peasants. They lived in the same village I all their lives, and both were born in 1815. The largest Christinas pudding ever made was that which was boiled for 14 days in a brewing copper for " mine host " of the Red Lion, Southwark, in 1718. It weighed more than 10001b. The national consumption of petrol goes to show that, in the first ten months of 1933, motor vehicles covered in Britain no less than 640,000,000 miles more than in the same period of 1932. Fakirs figure prominently in many native football matches in India, working their spells to confound the opposing side. A pot of Jadu (magic) was recently unearthed from a playing field in Lahore. "Music cabs" havo been added .to New York's fleet of taxis. They are the first of 5000 to be equipped with l wireless sets, which will tune in on any broadcast as soon as the taximeter starts ticking. Turkey is purifying and simplifying her language, which'hitherto has been so jumbled as to account for the low standard of education. At the last census 95 per cent of the population proved illiterate. Bouses built by private enterprise in Britain during the twelve months ended September last numbered 169,100, or some 36,000 irore than in 1931-32. Local authorities erected 49,213 houses in the same period. Mr. William Colsen, a 70-year-old curio dealer of Port Elizabeth, 'has not slept for 40 years. In that time he hss never been ill or felt drowsy. ' Bjs doctors persist in attributing his insomnia to a weak heart. In a recent law case in England one of the statutes quoted was so old that the only authority for its ever having existed was a fourteenth-century copy of it which is preserved in the Publio Records Office in London. Flying ants recently invaded the small town ot Dunafoklvar, near Budapest. The insects took three hourg. to - pass over the town, and during that time the view was entirely obscured and traffic was unable to proceed. A room for every day in the year, a staircase for every week in the year, and a court for every day of the week —that is one description of Knowle, one of Kent's famous mansions, which was built in the fifteenth century. Centenarians are more common in Bulgaria than in most countries; just now there are 158 Bulgarians who claim to be over 100 years of age. Of this number, only four are unmarried, eighty-five are men and seventy-three women. s Parachutes have saved 120 lives in - Britain since 1926, the post-war total for the whole world being now over 900. Escape by parachute - from a doomed aejroplnne is the qualification for membership of the famous Caterpillar Club. A Harbin mother and her daughter both gave birth to boys at the same time in the same hospital ward. The nurses mixed the babies in bathing them; admitted they could noi tell which was the tmcle and which the nephew. Doctors prevented a family t quarrel by establishing the status ct tha babies to the satisfaction of all.