News in Brief

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23009, 9 April 1938, Page 16 (Supplement)

News in Brief

A population census will be taken in Germany on May 17.

Gandhi is to be proposed again thiß year as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize,

Burton-on-Trent has been famous for its beers and ales for more than three centuries.

M. Imre Bares, correspondent of Az Est, the Liberal Budapest newspaper, has been expelled from Italy. When a broom is lashed to the mainmast of a ship, it is a sign that the owner of the vessel wishes to sell it. Among the ancient buildings in Knaresborough, in Yorkshire, is one reported to be the oldest chemist's shop in England.

Sickness of all kinds is estimated to cost Britain £283,000,000 a year.. Of this total, £100,000,000 represents the value of work lost.

Lord Nuffield, the motor-car manuis the son of a man who drove a stage-coach in Western Canada and was made an Indian chief.

Ninety tons of Harrar coffee arrived recently in Hamburg from Abyssinia as a contribution from Signor Mussolini to the German Winter Relief Fund.

A Shire horse is recorded as frequently stealing a haddock from the slab of a fishmonger near.his stable and munching it with every sign of satisfaction.

M. Ambrose Szabo, _ a retired schoolmaster of the parish of Aba, Western Hungary, died 10 davs before his 105 th birthday. He fought in the war of 1859.

In a determined effort to find out what is wrong with the way mathematics is'being taught in Czechoslovakia, the Ministry of Education has sent out examination papers to 930 elementary schools.

For forty-one years, the same clothes brush has in use at County Hall, Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire. Recently a member of Bucks Standing Joint Committee reported it as having no bristles left..

The will of Mr. Milton Bode, veteran theatre owner, stated that his ashes were to rest among the graves of nine dogs buried in his garden in a miniature brick-lined vault built by Mr. Bode five years ago.

Eighty-five-year-old Joseph Kolmer and his seventy-five-year-old bride took seats in their institution's lift for an entire afternoon. They are too old to travel, but lifts give them a thrill, and this was their honeymoon.

A Royal Air Force aeroplane, making a forced landing at Cheltenham recently, carried away the roof of a house and crashed into a private garden in the centre of the town. The pilot landed safely by parachute two miles away. On his way home from America in the German liner Hamburg the Dean of Exeter, attended a ship s costume fete. He had no fancy dress, so he wore his dean's evening clothes —breeches, silk stockings and scarlet doctor s gown. He won first prize. A gilt eagle weighing 5501b. has been stolen from the top of a monument at Sarrebourg (Moselle) to French and German soldiers who fell in the war of 1870-71. The eagle, which was made of cast iron, is thought, to have been stolen on behalf of a collector of souvenirs. Beer by the hour is the now system of drinking invented by a Budapest publican. Instead of paying for drinks people pay a shilling an hour and drink as much as they like in that time. Each customer is handed an alarm clock along with his first drink, set to, ring one now from that moment.

An avalanche killed „21 people in Kirovsk, a Soviet mining town in the Arctic Circle.

Three Estonian frontier guards have been killed in a clash with Russian guards on the Soviet border. Under new regulations of the Hitler Youth movement, young girl members must in future take part in camping expeditions and special excursions.

The German Telefunken Company has obtained a 25-year concession for the development of broadcasting in Greece.

Among the earliest forms of calendars were square pieces of wood, bone or brass, with notches for three months on each side.

The Standard Imperial Yard, which is carefully housed by the Board of Trade, was cast in 1845 of a mixture of copper, tin and zinc.

It is denied in Moscow that David Oistrakh, the Russian violinist, who won last year's Eugene Ysaye Grand Prix at Brussels, has been executed. Seven weasels chaned and tried to attack a sixty-three-year-old man in North Wales. He escaped them by jumping over a wall into an adjoining field.

Sentence of death on Ezekiel Altman, aged 22, a Jewish special constable, for firing at an Arab omnibus near Jerusalem, has been commuted to life imprisonment.

M. Paul Kern, a disabled Hungarian ex-serviceman who had not had a moment's sleep since 1915, has now tried hypnotic treatment, and was able to sleep while under the hypnotist's influence.

Passing the driving test, William Watson, of Oklahoma, U.S.A., was described as one of the best drivers ever examined. He is paralysed in both legs, and uses hand extensions fitted to the foot controls.

Every day 400,000 letters posted in Great Britam have either a wrong address or none at all. Some of them contain money, ranging from a sixpenny postal order to Treasury notes for quite large amounts.

A police officer stated at London s South Western Police Court that he found £6O in a bag: tied to the leg of a man *ho was begging at Streatham. There was another £lO in silver in the man's pocket.

Policewomen recruited in Prague must have height, strength, and skill at sports. Ju-jitsu will be one of the chief items in their training, but it is emphasised that they must possess "a completely feminine outlook on life."

Collecting cars (he had 13) was the strange hobbv of Dr. T. Nov Leah, well-known Plymouth medical practitioner. He looked upon a car as a personal friend. Every quarter-day he used to draw lots to decide which should be licensed.

A young Spanish artist undergoing six months' imprisonment, persuaded the authorities to let him use his cell as a studio. He set up his easels and had all his working materials brought to him. During the six months ho completed sixty clever sketches. Mrs. Cornwallis Orford, a rich American, owns nearly 300 umbrellas, more than anyone else in the world, but iB Still looking for more. She has a gallery full of umbrellas collected from all over the world for 20 years. She never uses one herself — too much trouble to carry," she says.

"Butted to death through a window of his bedroom by a dream goat was the inquest verdict on a 64-year-old American. He told the hospital stafi with his last breath, that he had had a terrible dream, in which a goat chased him round I;he bedroom, then butted him through the window.