NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22628, 16 January 1937, Page 15 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

America's most popular sport is fishing, with billiards and bowling next. In the Sahara Desert, the averages depth of the sand is botweeu twenty and thirty feet.

Mouse-traps can bo valuable ; an antique specimen was recently sold in London for £2 10s.

Passenger vehicles belonging to London Transport number 12,060, and run 546.700.000 miles a year.

More than 1,000,000 people in Britain are now buying their homes through building societies.

"Everything for dwarfs" is the slogan of a shop in Budapest. The owner of tho place is himself a dwarf. Finnish police are searching for a thief who breaks into stables at night and cuts off the tails of horses. Britain now has 58,363 practising doctors, male and female; this is an increase of 877 on last year's figure.

Failure to pass the test has been the fate of 87,000 candidates for driving licences in Britain since March, 10-3-1.

The third quarter of the year —July, August and September—is now the favourite time for marriages in England.

The first group of Italian women and children to join their men-folk employed in Abyssinia sailed from Naples recently.

American aeroplanes will accept domestic pets, such as cats and dogs, as passengers: but bears, however tame, are banned.

Babbits may be small, but ten of them will cat as much grass and pasturage as one sheep, states an English journal. Covering 79 pages and containing 10.000 words, the record "fan" letter was recently received by Charles Boyer, the film star.

A decree recently published in the Borne Official Gazette authorises the expenditure of £40,000 for police investigation work.

Educating each child in England's elementary schools means a yearly expenditure of £l3 lis, as compared with £4 6s in 1910.

Nearly 3000 . people took part in a service at Bipon Cathedral recently in commemoration of tho centenary of the diocese of Bipon.

Uniforms for England's postmen call for 250 miles of cloth. 500 miles of cotton fabrics, and 1,000,000 yards of tape and braid every year. Three Arabs were sentenced to death recently at Jerusalem for participating iu engagements in which a British army sergeant and a policeman were killed. Officers and employees of the Salvation Army number about 35,000. They operate in ninety different countries using seventy-four different languages. Since 1931 the population of the Union of South Africa has increased by 1,456.005 to 9.588,065. The white population is 2,003,512 —an increase of 115,33/»

Bending down to pick up a piece of garden hose to water a flower-bed, recently, an American woman saw tho hose" wriggle away. It was a six-foot blacksnake.

Out of every ton of coal bought for domestic use in Britain, one hundredweight, or one-twentieth, escapes unconsumcd up the chimney, in the form of soot, etc. Commercial motor vehicles in Greece must now, by law, be painted blue. This is to ensure a uniform appearance in case the vehicles are required for military purposes. An order for eight motor tank ships, of about 10.000 tons each and costing altogether £1,300,000, has been placed with Dutch shipbuilding yards by the Royal Dutch-Shell group. At a recent adjourned debate of the Oxford Union Society a motion was carried by 191 votes to 94, "That this house would not approve the return to Germanv of her former colonies."

Franz Thaler, a German watchmaker's assistant, has used 268.750 matchsticks in constructing a clock. With the exception of the weights and chain every part is made of matches.

Six skeletons, believed to be some 1000 years old, have been unearthed by workmen at Denton Court estate, Gravesend. They were found near the remains of St. Mary's Chapel, which was built A.D. 950.

In 22 Japanese cities, "Thought Surveillance" offices have been opened by order of Parliament. Regulation of public thinking and suppression of dangerous thoughts are the aims of the new law.

Twenty-two years after a wounded French' poilu went home to visit his parents in August, 1914, he was found in the family attic and arrested as a deserter. He had been there in hiding for 22 years.

A scheme which' involves the provision of a science laboratory for police purposes has been approved by Birmingham Watch Committee. Ultimately this laboratory will serve as a central unit for the West Midlands. Gas masks for bees —not for individual bees, but for hives —have been patented in Czechoslovakia. Experiments showed that hives exposed to chlorine lost 98 per cent of the bees. When exposed to chloropicrin, all the bees perished. London's famous Tower Bridge, now forty-two years old. cost more than £1.500,000 to build, and last -year nearly £28.000 was spent on its maintenance. The arms are raised on an average about thirteen times a day. Charles Chaplin, the famous film star, was a pupil at the Cuckoo Schools, North Hanwell. Middlesex, thirty-three years ago. Now a housing estate occupies tho site, and it is proposed to call one thoroughfare "Chaplin Circus." Mr. Hiram Hill, aged sixty-nine, postman at Wootton, Lincolnshire, for fifty-five years, is to retire early this year. In the course of his duties he has walked a distance equal to sixtimes round tho world, about 150,000 miles.

The French Government has decided to build a large new observatory at Forcalquior (Basses-Alpes), equipped with the most modern astronomical instruments, which will include the second most powerful telescope in tho world.

After 35 years Portsmouth has discarded trawears for trolley-buses. The last tramear to run through the city was driven by Sir John Timpson, chairman of the tramways committee. The change over has cost tho city about £250,000.

Mr. Mackenzie King, the Prime Minister, has announced that tho Canadian Government has decided to buy from Great Britain two modern destroyers built in 1931 to take the placo of tho Champlain and tho Vancouver, which are obsolete. It is officially announced that the contract for the new Nile dam in the Delta, which is to take the place of the existing barrage below Cairo, has been awarded to Maedonald Gibbs and Co. (Engineers), Limited, whose tender was the second lowest at £F2,486,1 33. Mrs Claude Henton, of Windsor, widow of tho British business man who was killed in the German air liner crash in the Thuringian Forest, recently, is to receive £1,650 from a German insurance company, and it is understood that a way will bo found | to pay it in British currency.

For two hours recently Denhnm cameramen waited impatiently while two bats hold up the filming, in "Dreaming Lips," of a conceit. It is estimated that the invasion cost the company nearly £IOO. The performance had an enthusiastic reception from the extras, to whom every hour's "overtime" was worth 2s Gd.