NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22991, 19 March 1938, Page 15 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

A lock of Nelson's hair has been sold at Sotheby's, London, for £l2. Last year was the busiest year in the British Mint's history; it struck 331,000,000 coins. In Britain about 200 trains a year nro stopped by tho pulling of tho communication cord. A prize of .£BOOO has boon offered f<pr tho best plan submitted for a Berlin "University City." A Roman baby boy has a birthmark in tho form of a perfect Lietor's Fasces, the Fascist emblem. Curved lines are used in Chinese architecture, as they are supposed to ward off evil spirits. Of the 00,000 butchers in England, about half are not getting a living, according to one expert. A Bulgarian has committed suicide at the ago of 99, because he did not want to bo a centenarian. The Rev. Thomas Frasor Pye Rawlins, of College Road, Maidenhead, puts his cats first in his £9,800 will. Italy has honoured Marconi by making his birthday, April 25, a national holiday, to bo known as Marconi Day. There are fortv-eight different shades of rouge and fifty shades of powder for tho particular girl to choose from. Chilean State Railways have placed a contract worth £200,000 with the Bethlehem Steel Corporation for steel rails. Frau Therese Graf, General Goering's old nurse and foster mother, was buried at Munich with full Nazi honours. British railways uso about 14,800 locomotives every week-day, and every year tho engines travel 500 million miles. A scheme to move the whole Diplomatic Corps from Salamanca, Spain, to San Sebastian is reported from San Sebastian. Owing to tho spread of foot-and-mouth disease in Germany tho annual agricultural show in Berlin will not tako place this year. King Victor Emmanuel of Italy has bestowed upon Marshal Graziani, the retiring Viceroy of Abyssinia, the title of Marchese di Neghelli. The Hungarian Legation in Washington tendered to the United States Government tho sum of £1960 as a token payment of war debt. There are more than 60,000 medical men practising in Britain. This means that there is one doctor to less than every 1000 of the population. Tho importation of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs from Europe, including Great Britain, into South Africa, is prohibited by a Union proclamation. The rise in the cost of newsprint and the increase in wages has forced Belgian newspaper owners to raise tho price from 35 centimes to 40 centimes. The French commission on industrial production recommended to M. Chautemps, the French Premier, that tho 40-hour week should be made more flexible. A small hotel near Toulon was wrecked by tho explosion of 501b. of dynamite, ' which, it is believed, had been placed in the building as an act of vengeance. A slump in marriages is prophesied for 1943 in Britain. By that year there will be a shortage or at least 50,000 in the number of spinsters of the usual age for marriage. Coimbra University in Lisbon has been celebrating its 400 th anniversary, two British professors being among the 20 foreign visitors who were awarded honorary degrees. Axel Munthe's book " The Story of San Miehele," has been issued in Braille by the Nationul Institute for the Blind. It had already been recorded as a " talking book." Music is an incentive to increased outputs in factories, according to the British Medical Research Council. And lively music is better for this purpose than tho quieter kind. The youngest child to cross the Atlantic alone is Isidore Dutlioy, an oight-weeks-old motherless boy, who travelled from New York to the home of his father's parents in Belgium. Tho manuscript of Kipling's Recessional has been presented to the nation, and is now on view at the British Museum, with a card telling how it was rescued from a wastepaper basket. Measuring 24 i inches by 13J inches, and weighing 321b., a Swedish copper coin dated 1659 is believed to be the. largest in the world. It is oblong in shape, and bears tho mint-mark in every corner. Driven from the steeple of St. John's Church, Reading, England, where they did £SOO damage, pigeons have made their homo in the organ chamber of Trinity Congregational Church, two streets away. The bodv of the late Prince Ahmed Seif-ed-Din, the "Mad Prince," who in 1925 escaped from a mental homo at Ticehurst, Sussex, was placed on board ship at Istanbul for conveyance to Alexandria. A statue of Canning, the British Foreign Secretary from 1822 to 1827 and champion of Argentine independence, was unveiled in Buenos Aires by Sir Esmond Ovey, the British Ambassador to Argentina. Four Spaniards reported to bo soldiers of the Pavia Regiment stationed at La Linea were fined in the police court at Gibraltar for having unlawfully crossed the British frontier without the proper police permits-. The finances of Newfoundland show an improvement, as the revenuo for the second half of 1937 exceeded that for the corresponding period of 1936 by about £220,000, and the_ Customs revenue rose similarly by £153,630. The Forestry Commissioners have planned a shelter belt of liardy pines to bo planted on Corney (South-west Cumberland) Fell, with tho objects of protecting tho valley from high winds and later of being felled and sold for timber. Herr Hitler visited the exhibition of Italian art from 1800 to the present day held in Berlin, and was presented by tho Italian Ambassador, Signor Attolieo, on behalf of Signor Mussolini, with an illustrated edition of Dante's Divine Comedy. Ever since the historic occasion when Bishop Thilo of Trotha had his ring stolen by a raven at Morseburg Castle, near Halle, Prussia, it has boen a tradition that a raven should always be kept in the castle. The raven kept there for tho last 25 years died recently. The air route from Croydon to Zurich has been extended to Samaden, in the Fngaditie, where an aerodrome has been opened by Swissair. The first aeroplane carried British visitors, and the journey from Croydon to Samaden took five hours, against 35 hours by train. It is announced in Rome that between October 3, 1935, when the Italians invaded- Abyssinia, and November 30, 1937, 171 guns, 297,295 rifles of various kinds, 1521 revolvers, and 1011 machine-guns have been captured or confiscated in Italian East Africa. Coral is growing rapidly in the harbour at Shoreham, Sussex, and boat keels ntid anchor chains are becoming encrusted with lumps as bi.ij as footballs. The water in part of the harbour never drops below 75 degrees because it is used to cool Brighton power station condensers. Of a total population of 30,677 Europeans in tho former German colony of South-west Africa 9632 speak German in their homes, and of these 6244 arc South African or British subjects. Tho figures are given in a statement issued by the Soutli-west Africa Administration.